Medical Device Daily National Editor

PALM DESERT, California — The Materials and Processes for Medical Devices Conference, which opened here Sunday, is aimed at those interested in what makes medical devices tick.

Or rather, what makes them work without ticking or, for that matter, without making any sound at all.

Laura Marshall, director of business development for medical devices at ASM International (Materials Park, Ohio), sponsor of the conference, said in a phone interview late last week that the three-day gathering at the Marriott Desert Springs Resort offers an opportunity for medical device designers and engineers to meet with materials researchers and developers, people with different skill sets that are more frequently found in the same room.

The organization, which likes to add “The Materials Information Society” to its name, is focused on materials – particularly on the metals side, but increasingly with an added emphasis on polymers – and also processes. So high-tech medical devices obviously are an increasingly important “sweet spot” for the organization, which has some 38,000 members worldwide, about 20% of them from outside the U.S.

“Our members who are involved in the medical device sector told us a few years ago that we should develop programs around the needs of medical device designers and engineers,” she said.

So that’s what ASM did, beginning with the first Materials and Processes for Medical Devices gathering four years ago in Anaheim, California, and following in subsequent years in similar med-tech hotbeds Minneapolis and Boston.

Last year the conference took a different turn.

In a cooperative program with the Cleveland Clinic, the conference was held in the clinic’s venue. “That was a totally different setting for us,” Marshall said of the gathering, held not far from the society’s headquarters location east of Cleveland. “[Attendees] got great feedback, linked through the clinic’s surgeons to patients.”

After this year’s session at the posh Marriott locale in the Palm Springs area, the meeting will return next year to the clinical setting in Cleveland.

In addition to conference programs such as this week’s event, ASM emphasizes training-type efforts. “As we move forward with our service offerings,” Marshall said, “we also have training courses on subjects such as metallurgy and polymers.” Many of those involve the “what’s new” of materials used in medical devices, such as nitinol and other metals used in implantable products.

The association is, as Marshall and colleague Kristen Minihan put it during the phone conversation, “94 years young,” having its roots back in 1913, when the group was formed as the Steel Treaters Society. But it’s very much up-to-date, including having established an on-line database last year focused on the materials and processes used in cardiovascular devices.

ASM will unveil a second on-line module at this year’s meeting, this one focused on the orthopedic sector, which is, pardon the pun, knee-deep in implantable products.

“These modules offer a single unified source for information on the materials themselves, biocompatibility and some of the drug components used with them in combination products,” Marshall said.

The new orthopedic module is featured in ASM’s booth in the conference’s exhibit area, and will be highlighted during a Monday evening reception for meeting attendees.

The conference program is replete with sessions aimed at fulfilling the promise of what ASM referred to in its promotional materials as “a magnificent opportunity for professional enrichment ... the only event where the world’s foremost scientists and engineers share the latest developments in applied materials, processes, product performance and new technologies for medical/dental devices.”

The keynote sessions alone seem to offer plenty of opportunity to fulfill that promise, with session titles such as “Nanostructured Interfaces for Medical Devices and Drug Delivery,” “Lessons Learned in Vascular Device Development,” “Medical Device Applications of Shape Memory Polymers” and “The Future of Joint Replacement of the Lower Extremity: A Lifetime of Normal Function?”

ASM expects attendance for this week’s meeting to total about 225.