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Coat-X

BioAlps | 20 years of innovation | Coat-X

14.09.2021
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Thin-film encapsulation technology helping increase product reliability and miniaturisation effectiveness

 

We are pleased to share with you our new testimonial series as part of our ecosystem’s 20th anniversary celebrations. The series aims to provide a platform for regional Life Sciences key players to present themselves, share their perspectives on the development of Western Switzerland’s Life Sciences ecosystem and their outlook on upcoming challenges and opportunities. The following article is presented to you by Coat-X.

 

Presentation of Coat-X’s activities

Coat-X developed and industrialised a new thin-film encapsulation technology which is unique for its superior hermeticity and minimal volume utilisation. The technology is an enabler for Coat-X’s customers to increase their product reliability and perform further miniaturisation. Coat-X’s biocompatible thin-film barrier has been successfully applied to a variety of medical devices and has shown the potential to be applied in many other sectors.

 

Major Life Sciences trends and developments in Western Switzerland and Coat-X’s contribution

Major observable trends in our field are

  • an overall push for miniaturisation and more embedded intelligence in most of our customers products
  • a growing regulatory and standard testing requirements

By providing an extremely thin but highly hermetic barrier coating solution, Coat-X can effectively contribute to solve challenges associated with the first trend mentioned above. In addition, we obtained our Medical Device ISO13485 certification in 2020 which allows us to not only meet our customer’s technical needs but also to simplify their regulatory requirements.

 

Significant foreseeable trends and challenges in Life Sciences

As a coating service provider, we serve customers worldwide. It is of paramount importance for us as well as for our customers that goods and services can easily circulates across borders with minimal constrains.

 

Major events which have contributed to the development of Life Sciences

Switzerland has great platforms to support and boost innovation such as Innosuisse and Interreg. These are extremely important for small and medium companies to facilitate collaborations with academia, and to generate synergies between industrial partners.

During the past 3 years, such platforms allowed Coat-X to feed its new product pipeline via collaborations with renowned institutions and companies such as the Wyss Center, sitem-insel, CSEM and PMI R&D.

 

How will Coat-X evolve to meet the new demand for personal health in a growing, interdisciplinary market?

Coat-X is well positioned to help address some of the technical challenges that accompany the demand for “smart” medical devices. Indeed, embedding sensors in devices, pushing miniaturisation of these products, and allowing for maximum portability, often require high performance encapsulation solutions to protect such devices from their environment (e.g. moisture or body fluids).

 

Coat-X’s recommendations

In addition to QA and RA growing requirements, the challenge of protecting/encapsulating Medical Devices (as well as other devices) is often underestimated. We can only recommend design engineers/companies to consider targeted continuing education provided by various institutions such as sitem-insel or ARIAQ SA.

 

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