Medical Tubing 2024

Overview

Medical tubing and catheters play a critical role in a huge variety of healthcare applications, and demand is growing thanks to factors such as an aging population and moves towards less invasive medical procedures. This conference will address the latest tubing and catheter developments for a wide range of medical requirements including intravenous, infusion, dialysis, respiratory, feeding, and drainage applications. It will also examine the latest standards and certification requirements in this heavily regulated sector. There are a huge variety of polymer options available for medical tubing production including flexible vinyl compounds, thermoplastic elastomers, thermoplastic urethanes..., polyolefins, fluoropolymers, polyamides, polyimides, silicones, PEEK and PEBA. Inter-material competition is strong and selecting the optimum polymer grade to meet requirements such as flexibility, clarity, kink-resistance, dimensional stability, biocompatibility and cost-reduction can present a considerable challenge. In addition, exciting new developments in additives and the latest compound formulations are bringing added functionality, increased performance and improved biocompatibility to medical tubing products. Examples include antimicrobial, radiopaque, nanocomposite, lubricious and color-coded compounds. Presentations at the Medical Tubing conference will address the latest advances in polymers, additives and compounds to meet the growing and evolving demands of this dynamic and highly competitive market. On the design and production front, tubing configurations are becoming more complex, including increasingly sophisticated multi-layer, multi-lumen and micro-bore designs. These have to be produced to extremely tight tolerances and at higher throughputs to deliver cost efficiencies. At the Medical Tubing conference, leading experts will discuss how extrusion technologies are being developed and refined to meet these considerable challenges.Read more