MassDevice Features rss

At Employ+Ability, work is good

Joe Nowlan — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:20:07 +0000

Employ+Ability Inc., like many of its disabled employees, has been defying the odds for nearly 30 years.

Like many of its 33 employees, for more than 27 years Employ+Ability Inc. has been defying the odds.

As with many American manufacturers, this small original equipment maker in Braintree, Mass., faced the brink when competition from China began prying away business in 2004. The company, which primarily makes hot and cold packs for companies like Covidien (NYSE:COV), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Inverness Medical Innovations (NYSE:IMA), lost a $10 million contract to the Far East and the future looked a little grim.

MassDevice Q&A: Advertising executive Bruce Lehman

Brian Johnson — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:40:04 +0000

Advertising executive Bruce Lehman on the challenges and opportunities in marketing medical devices for the masses.

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Bruce Lehman's been in the advertising game since the late 1970s, but the principal at Lehman Millet, a Boston-based marketing and communications agency, has been focused on the medical device and diagnostics industry solely since the 1990s, making it a powerful player in the industry despite its relatively small size.

Today, Lehman Millet's client mix includes biotechnology, biomaterials and specialty pharmaceutical firms, along with its core medical device customers. MassDevice: spoke with Lehman, 59, about an ever-present question: "How, exactly, do you market a medical device?"

MassDevice Q&A: Thermo Fisher Scientific CEO Marc Casper

Brad Perriello — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:11:41 +0000

Thermo Fisher Scientific's new CEO Marc Casper on taking the reins from Marijn Dekkers and his cautious optimism about 2010.

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To outside observers, Marijn Dekkers' departure from the corner office at Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) might have seemed abrupt. After a seven-year run during which he led a profound re-shaping of the laboratory equipment and supplies manufacturer (and boosted revenues from the $2 billion range to about $10.5 billion a year), Dekkers resigned as CEO of the Waltham, Mass.-based firm to take the helm at German pharma giant Bayer AG.

Winning the arms race: The centuries-old quest to build a better prosthetic

Alan Siegel — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:22:16 +0000

Advances have been few and far between since Ambroise Paré invented modern prosthetics in the 16th century. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might just change that.

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JUNE 22, 2008 WAS A GORGEOUS EARLY SUMMER DAY, with partly cloudy skies and 80-degree temperatures.

Taking advantage of the weather, Greg Reynolds, a muscular 24-year-old veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, hopped on his yellow Suzuki TL1000R racing bike to spend the morning at Colt State Park in Bristol, R.I., a swath of land on Narragansett Bay some 17 miles south of his house in Dighton, Mass.

The TL1000R is not a motorcycle for the casual rider. Its 996C, 4-stroke engine is capable of 9,500 RPM — or zero to 60 miles per hour in about 3.6 seconds — giving the rider the feeling of being strapped onto the nose of a rocket.

The rebuilding process begins

Alan Siegel — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:53:48 +0000

Greg Reynolds had to rebuild himself, physically and mentally, to recover from his accident and from the post-traumatic stress disorder he brought back from Iraq.

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It wasn't until after the accident that Greg Reynolds realized he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The cloud of invincibility that first came over him in Iraq lingered long after he returned to Massachusetts. He even worked as a guard for cash-handling company Loomis Armored – and didn't wear a bullet-proof vest.

And he just couldn't relax. He drove friends crazy with his strict daily schedule.