By Mary Vanac
U.S. Endoscopy’s COO hopes city and state economic development programs will help his company keep innovating.
The Mentor, Ohio-based company makes endoscopic products aimed at unmet needs in the burgeoning market for minimally invasive surgical procedures of the digestive system. It offers about 140 products — many of them accessories that enable diagnosis or therapy — and usually introduces several new products and accessories each year.
Now U.S. Endoscopy wants to do a $4.7 million expansion so it can design, make and sell even more endoscopic products. Of course, the medical device maker that employs 330 would have to hire more people to expand — 150 in the next four years, according to COO Tony Siracusa.
So the company applied for a $1 million Ohio Third Frontier grant to push some of its gastrointestinal products into urology and cystology procedures. That expansion “will involve significant research and development, product testing, regulatory approvals and certifications,” according to the company’s letter of intent (PDF) for the grant. “Significant job growth would creation at the company’s headquarters and manufacturing facility would occur at the end of the Third Frontier project.”
U.S. Endoscopy also is looking for a Mentor Incentive grant from the Mentor Dept. of Economic & Community Development, Siracusa said. That grant request will be taken up by the Mentor City Council during its meeting April 20.
The company would like to create its production technician, engineering and product manager jobs in Mentor, first, and in Ohio, second, Siracusa said.
“In this field of medical devices, most of our competitors do a lot of work with low-cost countries,” he said.
The company also would like to continue growing.
“We’re resource-constrained. We can only process so many ideas at one time,” Siracusa said. The grants “would help us accelerate the launch of these products, which in turn, would accelerate the hiring that we would need to support that.”
