Texas Medical Device Landscape--2016

Each year medical devices continue play a vital role in people's lives. These products are revolutionizing medicine with groundbreaking advances in both the treatment and the detection of diseases.

A medical device is defined by the FDA as "an instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent, or other similar or related article, including a component part, or accessory…intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.”

The U.S. is the largest medical device market in the world with a market size of approximately $110 billion. In 2012, the U.S. market value represented around 38 percent of the global medical device market. There are nearly 7,000 medical device companies in the U.S., most of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).  More than 80 percent of medical device companies have fewer than 50 employees. Medical device companies are mainly concentrated in regions known for other tech industries, such as microelectronics and biotechnology. 

Many of the biggest players in the medical device industry have corporate facilities in Texas. More than a dozen Fortune 1000 medical device companies have manufacturing or management operations in the Lone Star State, including Abbott Laboratories, Agilent Technologies, Baxter International, Becton Dickinson, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Stryker, Zimmer, among others.

These companies have developed a large medical device workforce in the state. Over 740 firms employ more than 15,400 workers in this sector, making Texas one of the top states in the country for the number of medical device workers.

A wide variety of medical products are developed and manufactured in Texas, ranging from surgical sutures and bandages to medication delivery systems and molecular biology kits. While a broad spectrum of medical specializations are served by Texas device companies, the state has developed several unique clusters, including ophthalmology, orthopedics, cardiology, diagnostics, and wound care.

Venture capital has played a major role in the development of Texas’s medical device industry. Since 2005, the state’s Texas Emerging Technology Fund (TETF) has invested more than $88 million in medical device-related deals, and, from 2009 to 2014, venture capital firms invested more than $526.7 million in 82 Texas medical device deals.

Texas's Life Science and Health Care Scene -- 2016

Research and development (R&D) is at the core of Texas’s biotechnology industry. In Texas, biomedical research, or research conducted to aid and support the development body of knowledge in the field of medicine, is bolstered in large part by the state’s vast network of public universities and medical institutions. These school and health-related facilities invest strongly in biomedical research and development. In 2013 alone, Texas universities spent nearly $3 billion on medical and life sciences research, which made up more than 65 percent of all higher education R&D expenditures in the state.

Public investment in biotech R&D is complemented by Texas’s significant concentration of private sector R&D activity. More than a thousand private R&D firms, employing nearly 20,000 workers, call Texas home. Many of the world’s largest private biotech R&D firms have operations in Texas, including PPD, Covance, Quintiles, and INC Research.

In addition to R&D centers, Texas has more than 1,600 medical and testing laboratories. These laboratories employ nearly 40,000. Major lab firms in the state include LabCorp’s Esoterix subsidiary, Spanish biological product firm Grifols, and Sonic Healthcare’s Clinical Pathology Laboratories subsidiary.

Over the past decade, the state’s Texas Emerging Technology Fund (TETF) has invested more than $142 million in some of the state’s major higher education institutes for biomedical research-related deals in areas ranging from genetic engineering to pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The Lone Star State is also among the leaders in cancer research. Major Texas institutions in cancer research include MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Scott & White Cancer Institute in Temple, and Texas Oncology and Mary Crowley Cancer Research Centers in Dallas. Furthermore, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), a $3 billion initiative based in Austin, has played a major role in expanding Texas cancer research.