Medical product engineers, designers, manufacturers, and distributors are invited to submit their products to the 1999 Medical Design Excellence Awards, a program that recognizes innovative medical devices. The competition is sponsored by Canon Communications llc (Santa Monica, CA) and endorsed by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA; Great Falls, VA).

Bruce Behringer (left) and Greg Farrell of Bayer Diagnostics (Tarrytown, NY) accepted the 1998 MDEA award for the Unifluidics module, an integral part of the company's Advia 129 hematology blood analyzer.

 

An eight-member jury will evaluate the submissions for design and engineering innovation, contribution to health care, cost-effectiveness, benefits to users and patients, and business impact. The jurors are Sohrab Vossoughi, principal of Ziba Design (Portland, OR); Kent Ritzel, a director of Metaphase (St. Louis); John Gosbee, MD, director of the Center for Applied Medical Informatics, Michigan State University Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies; Matt Duncan, president of Morphix Design (San Clemente, CA); Christoph Böninger, executive board member, Siemens Design & Messe GmbH (Munich, Germany); Robert Hall, principal, GVO (Palo Alto, CA); Michael Wiklund, director and principal research scientist, American Institutes for Research New England Research Center (Concord, MA); and Corinna Lathan, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC).

To be eligible for submission, products must be commercially available by the February 8, 1999, deadline. Competition rules and entry forms are available by calling the 24-hour Fax-on-Demand line at 800/588-8527, by visiting Medical Device Link at http://www.devicelink.com/awards, or by calling Canon Communications at 310/392-5509 or IDSA at 703/759-0100.

Winning products will be on display throughout the Medical Design & Manufacturing East 99 Conference and Exposition, which will be held in New York City, May 25–27, 1999.