“We want to make our approach sustainable through the strategic involvement of existing European clusters and the use of collaboration opportunities. Our aim is to strengthen the growth and development of SMEs in many different regions and increase their chances of success by bringing them in contact with potential investors interested in new products,” said Iraida Loinaz from Fundación CIDETEC Nanomedicine, coordinator of the project, during the TBMED kick-off meeting held in San Sebastián (Donostia), Spain, on February 21 and 22, 2019.
The EU project TBMED sets out to tackle two of the most pressing issues in the EU health-care system: first, the large variation in patient diagnosis and second, continually increasing costs. The new EU-wide Medical Device Regulation poses enormous challenges, especially for European small and medium-sized manufacturers of medical devices. In order to help these companies deliver better care at more reasonable costs and thereby enable them to face global competition by large suppliers, the consortium aims to develop an open-innovation test bed (OITB) focusing on the most challenging devices of high-risk classification IIb upwards.
Fraunhofer ITEM will initially focus on the regulatory strategy, data gap analyses according to ISO 10993-1, and the development of specific, product-adapted toxicological testing strategies. Further on in the project, material-specific, (geno)toxicological screening methods providing first clues to possible adverse effects of the products under development will be devised, to enable detection of toxicological risks at an early stage in the development process. In addition, Fraunhofer ITEM will be responsible for test methods that are relevant for regulatory purposes, i.e. biocompatibility testing of medical devices according to ISO 10993-3 (genotoxicity) and ISO 10993-5 (cytotoxicity).
Press Contact
Dr. Cathrin Nastevska
Phone +49 511 5350-225
cathrin.nastevska@item.fraunhofer.de
contact for scientific information:
Dr. Christina Ziemann
christina.ziemann@item.fraunhofer.de