Ian Bolland sat down with Andy Morris, operations manager National Physical Laboratory (NPL) North of England and Carl Taylor, sales development leader, analytical science, to discuss the upcoming event NPL has in partnership with Grow MedTech.
The inaugural NPL medtech event will take place on 18 February in Huddersfield. The aim of the event is to allow businesses in the medtech space to set the agenda and share ideas and issues with their peers. There will be talks from sector experts, businesses that can provide support and case studies from companies already working in this space – along with the opportunity to network.
Andy Morris explained he set up the Manufacturing Measurement Network (MMN) – covering a series of industries – because he recognised the difficulty of getting SME manufacturers in the same room, notably because of time constraints. He believed that it was possible to put on an event focussed on medical innovation, that offered support and networking to medtech companies
Morris said: “Because NPL isn’t known in that space, we looked at partner organisations, and we’ve partnered with Grow MedTech because they’re well established within that region.
“Our northern office is based in Huddersfield University and they are a Grow MedTech partner so we’re closely intertwined with them, so it made sense to partner with Grow MedTech and run and event together.”
Four speakers are confirmed for the event covering topics such as R&D, EU MDR and funding for small medtech businesses.
One of the speakers is Karen Wilkinson from KTN whose background is in medical devices, clinical trials and digital health – as well as intellectual property management.
Carl Taylor explained the kind of things expected to crop up from his colleague Fernando Castro, who has experience in R&D, materials, nanotechnology, plastic electronics – and holds several roles including associate editor of the peer-review journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials
Taylor said: “From our own organisation we’ve got somebody who talks about our work, what we do around electronics, electronic reliability, flexible electronics, things that really often go into these devices but things that people don’t often consider.
“A lot of people develop these devices and they might understand how we put these electronics together, but how do we test the reliability of them? How do we make sure that this is ok if it goes in a patient or if a patient is using it?
“With this being the inaugural event, we’ve pulled together a broader overview of electronics, reliability, things around the MDR, funding and other things. In this first one we’ve pulled together what we think might be useful.
“After this event, we want to ask the audience to be part of a committee so they will help shape the next event.”
Taylor explained the feedback from the audience can be used to inform any future strategies from NPL going forward, and it could even each government level.
“This is the key thing that it gives audience members and opportunity to feed back what are their challenges and how can organisations like NPL help.”
