As one of the most important sectors of industry, healthcare requires an immense supply of raw materials, complex distribution networks, and a variety of manufacturing processes to save lives. Patients rely on the medical industry to have reliable supplies, and the COVID-19 pandemic revealed new opportunities to reinforce our domestic medical supply chain. This week, let’s talk about the medical industry and its response to a post-pandemic world.
We will begin with medical device manufacturing, the foundation for all modern medical tools.
Medical devices are a massive business, with the market expected to reach over $965 billionby 2030. Medical devices can be as simple as a pipette to as complicated as an MRI machine and collectively require every manufacturing capability available. Contract manufacturers help offset the costs of in-house manufacturing by lending their expertise and assets to medical device manufacturers on a contract basis.
Before the pandemic, medical device companies preferred cost savings over risk mitigation with these contract manufacturers, often outsourcing to international global partners. Now, with supply chain disruptions fresh in their minds, companies are reshoring significant contract manufacturing efforts to domestic sources. Thomasent.com’s sourcing data confirms this trend, as we see a 350% year-over-year increase in medical contract manufacturing sourcing.
Manufacturing-for-scale solutions are also experiencing a rise. Processes that can create several thousand products in a day with high accuracy are preferred over bespoke solutions, especially as the number of Americans 65 and older is forecasted to nearly double from 52 to 95 million by 2060. Thomasnet.com saw a 128% year-over-year increase in medical injection molding sourcing and a staggering 1,797% increase in medical machining sourcing. As medical devices get smaller, more complicated, and in more demand, we expect these sourcing trends to continue their stratospheric rise in our sourcing data.
