Maintaining Textile Innovation for Medical Device Development Amidst the COVID-19 Crisis

By John Greco, Vice President, Sales

As the country and the world grapple with these new and uncharted waters we currently find ourselves in, companies and workers across the globe have shown an inspiring willingness to do what’s best for our larger communities in order to protect not just their own families, but our most vulnerable and at-risk citizens. Many companies are transitioning some or all of its workforce to work remotely in compliance with government, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations to stay at home. Others are facing the difficult decision to lay off or furlough some of their staff, making it even harder for them to maintain critical product development operations.

Although maintaining normal business operations may seem nearly impossible with few or no employees at your facility, in this time of fear, uncertainty and doubt, the medical device and life sciences industries are more critical than ever. As we collectively adjust to what may be our “new normal” for weeks or months, it’s important to keep these industries going for the patients and healthcare providers that depend on their products.

Today’s medical device companies have been successful at bringing smaller, lower profile medical devices to market that support less invasive approaches and better patient outcomes in large part because of the incorporation of advanced biomedical textiles. Therefore, as an essential business, Cortland Biomedical has kept our doors open and the development and manufacturing of medical textile structures going. Like many other responsible businesses, we are taking extra precautions to protect the health and well-being of our employees and our communities – in particular, allowing employees to work remotely when possible to keep our on-site teams reduced to those who are key to the specific project being worked on.

Our medical device customers continue to have uninterrupted access to the engineering expertise and full project management capabilities of both our on- and off-site team members, and we continue to perform textile knitting, braiding, weaving, and textile structure assembly and fabrication from our state-of-the-art facility.

We share your eager anticipation of the day when it is safe to return to life – and business – as usual. In the meantime, we take a measure of comfort in knowing that we can continue to enable and support biomedical textile innovation that will help allow minimally invasive medical devices to be developed that will improve and perhaps even save the lives of the patients depending on them.