Q&A with Jim Moran, President and CEO of Biocoat
Q: Can you please provide an overview of Biocoat and what products and services you provide?
A: Biocoat is a global leader in the development, manufacturing, and application of hydrophilic coatings used in medical devices. We are headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania and have two facilities totaling 46,000 square feet. We manufacture UV and thermal cure HYDAK® coatings, dip coating equipment, and offer complete coating service capabilities. Our teams are fully dedicated to providing exceptional service, from early product development to long-term commercial production. We serve multiple markets including neurovascular, cardiovascular, peripheral vascular, ophthalmic, urologic, gastrointestinal, and more.
Q: What are some of the current challenges you are seeing in the industry around hydrophilic coatings?
A: Our industry has ever-changing requirements, and Biocoat is committed to ongoing coating innovation to lead with solutions. We partner with our customers to provide superior coatings and services to both address their current needs and enable advancements in patient therapies. Currently, the biggest challenges in this industry revolve around the need for more efficient manufacturing processes and advanced device designs that can reach further into the vasculature system. Biocoat provides its customers with a full-service application development and coating services model, which includes a team of experienced coating engineers and top-performing coatings, to complement product development and device manufacturing timelines and priorities.
Q: What processes and advanced designs are you seeing in the industry and what challenges do those bring?
A: Major trends include device designs that are continually becoming smaller and softer to allow access to hard-to-reach areas within the body. These softer materials tend to be very sticky, which increases the need for high-performing hydrophilic coatings. Our HYDAK coatings have shown excellent lubricity and durability on these substrates in both UV and thermal cure configurations. Another trend has been the need to efficiently coat metal substrates. HYDAK coatings can be applied directly to metals without the need for a primer or tie-layer. This provides time and material savings and allows the same coating process to be used for polymeric substrates, while yielding equivalent or better lubricity and particulate performance. Furthermore, Biocoat can apply hydrophilic coating to the inner diameter of many devices, which enables multiple design construction advantages, and with certain catheter designs, eliminates the need for PTFE liners.
Q: You mentioned full-service solutions, what services does Biocoat provide with their hydrophilic coatings?
A: The medical device industry has been increasingly outsourcing the design, development, and production of devices for many years now, and this trend is expected to continue. Biocoat is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of our customers, from design concept development through production, by providing flexible options that fit their specific product requirement. Starting with development, our engineers collaborate closely with our customers’ teams to design and evaluate the best coatings, and coating processes, for their applications. Our team provides rigorous performance testing, feedback throughout the process, and regulatory submission support, so that our customers can be confident in their devices’ performance and a smooth pathway to regulatory approval. When our customers are ready to move into production, our Contract Coating Services allows them to have their devices coated by our expert technicians in our class seven clean rooms or they can coat devices in their facility.
To learn more about Biocoat and their hydrophilic coatings, visit www.biocoat.com or stop by Booth #2343 at MD&M West 2024.
