On the eve of its 10th anniversary, New York medical device industry council MedTech released a report touting the strength of the state’s bio/med base and the benefits it confers on the economy.
The group has yet to release the full report, but MassDevice.com got an exclusive early look at some of results, which seem to put New York’s scene on competitive footing with some of the hottest bio/med pockets in the U.S.
New York’s device industry includes more than 74,000 workers, about 28,500 of which work upstate, a significant cluster of medtech activity. The upstate region alone supports around 77,000 jobs that account for $5 billion in direct, indirect and induced employment income, contributes more than $20 billion to the state’s economy and generates nearly $13 billion in revenue.
The growing industry supports high-paying, high-skilled jobs and can continue to do so with support from the community, MedTech said.
"The state’s economic growth exceeds national statistics in several cases, particularly upstate. If the area outside metropolitan New York City were its own state, it would rank 18th in the nation in terms of Bio/Med employment," according to a statement provided to MassDevice.com. "The overall outlook of future growth of Bio/Med in New York State is very positive, provided policy leaders rally around the growing industry."
That means bringing lawmakers, venture capital, academics, entrepreneurs and other players together to support innovation. MedTech surveyed several industry leaders who called for collaboration between bio/med industry and academic institutions to get students ready to enter the field.
"A balanced ecosystem brings universities that are interested in developing people for them. It brings investment into the community because you get startups and you find that you have venture capital coming into the market," Baxter vice president Nelson Patterson said in prepared remarks. "You have that alliance between venture capital, entrepreneurs and academics that really creates the hotbed for innovation that you want. Drugs and pharmaceuticals is the most highly concentrated industry sector in New York, which is 8% greater than what we see nationally New York office space construction boom that we are witnessing at the moment and with New York’s tech sector set to surpass that of the Silicon Valley, it is predicted that the MedTech industry is set to prosper further in the Big Apple.
MedTech plans to unveil the full report next week at the MEDTECH 2014 conference in Albany on Sept. 15 and 16.
