What is the most pressing issue facing the medical device industry?
A. I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg on biomaterials availability. This situation is much more critical than many outside the device industry want to believe. If we don’t get some kind of meaningful product liability reform for biomaterials suppliers, we’re going to see more and more of the bigger companies pulling out. We all know that over the years we’ve pretty much piggybacked on the needs of other, larger industries for a lot of basic materials. The relatively small amounts of materials that we’ve purchased from the large material and component suppliers has almost been at their pleasure, and we’ve relied on that. The biomaterials availability crisis triggered by the breast implant scare has put a lot of small device companies at risk of not surviving. If small companies manufacture only one or two products and can’t obtain sufficient product liability insurance coverage, they’re at risk of seeing their whole business disappear because they can’t get the materials the
