Biotech and Medtech - Inventions & Patents

Twenty years ago CAD programs appeared on the market and forever changed industrial design. Initially these softwares were bulky and their performance was not very good unless you run it on workstations and on a Unix platform. Over the last 10 years PC has become much more powerful and CAD programs like Solidworks has outstanding performance and intuitive interactive interface that allows for object manipulation, mating of parts and collision detection. This allows rapid construction of 3-D models using a combination of extruded objects. The 3-D models can be automatically converted into engineering drawings and if so desired the drawings can be sent to the machine shop for fabrication. Alternatively, the CAD program can export the 3-D model as an STL file which basically represents the surface of the 3-D model as series of triangulated surfaces. This data can be fed into rapid prototyping machines to automatically fabricate solid 3-D objects. Major impending change is on the way that will combine advances in computing power of PC, CAD software and a new class of 3-D printers.....

I reported in December that Google has launched patent search service ("Google Patent Search is Hot"). The major deficiencies are you cannot print or download a copy of the PDF file. No more ...........

One of the intent of this Blog is to introduce sources of information which the reader may otherwise not be aware of. For those of us involved in product development for medical devices, we have in the past relied on peer review journals, trade magazines and trade shows for information. In September last year I introduced bmesource.org as one of the best in the industry. I would also like to draw your attention to several other sources which are specific to orthopedics.