Manufacturers of Medical Devices Find a Home in Tech Valley
Published Nov 05, 2008
AngioDynamics CEO Eamonn Hobbs notes that Tech Valley has a long history of medical device entrepreneurship and that many of the companies started in the region have ultimately been acquired by global device manufacturing giants.
When Eamonn Hobbs started AngioDynamics in 1988, he located the company’s headquarters in Queensbury in Warren County. History, he hoped, would repeat itself.
“The list is very, very long of medical device companies that have been started here and grown here,” he says. “Most have been acquired by the biggest medical device companies in the world over the years.”
Consider U.S. Catheter and Instrument Corp., now CR Bard, which former floor refinisher David Sheridan and Norman Jeckel founded in 1939. Sheridan, dubbed the “Catheter King,” would go on to start or help start three other catheter companies.
AngioDynamics – which also has facilities in Cambridge, England, Manchester, Ga., and San Francisco – today is a market leader in angiographic catheters in the United States and generated sales of more than $112 million in 2007.
The company, which has 380 employees on a recently expanded campus, has moved into other products.
NanoKnife, for instance, allows doctors to perform surgical resections without a scalpel. “It only kills the cells in the treatment zone, and it leaves behind all the critical structures,” Hobbs explains.
In 1999, Carl Rosner purchased interest in a Springfield, Mass., company that he relocated to Schenectady. CardioMag Imaging is set to market MagnetoCardioGraphs, a noninvasive cardiac medical diagnostic device that provides information about heart function without ionizing radiation.
“Sensitive sensors measure the electric activity of the heart,” explains Rosner. “We can differentiate people who have normal heart function from people who have abnormal heart function from people who have the beginning of abnormal heart function. It’s an early diagnostic approach to heart disease that did not exist before.”
CardioMag has been funded by investors, including the New York State Urban Development Corp. The company places its value at a conservative $54 million and says market estimates worldwide for its products are $4 billion.
Rensselaer-based Ultradian Diagnostics, founded in 2004, is developing a minimally invasive, continuous glucose monitor. The device helps diabetics who avoid regular readings because they dislike pricking their finger. The device is worn on the torso or legs.
“You don’t even know it’s on,” says John Willis, CEO of Ultradian Diagnostics.
Willis, who spent most his career in Boston in medical device startups, began the company in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute incubator. To date, he’s raised $1 million in funding.
More than 21 million people in the United States and 300 million worldwide have diabetes. More than $5 billion is spent annually just on finger-stick test strips, the company notes.
The talent pool has been a major advantage of locating in Tech Valley. Willis has three RPI graduates working for him. Hobbs has also had luck finding skilled workers, particularly in the manufacturing area.
Tech Valley also has local vendors who support medical device industries. Ultradian Diagnostics, for instance, relies on local machine shops and molding companies.
Rosner expects more medical device companies to locate here. “Success breeds success,” he says.
Story by Pam George
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