Everything must be better, safer and more sustainable
13 May 2018
Blog by Bert van Boxtel – QA Consultant
During the 80’s, I joined the medical devices industry as a young guy. I chose to work with medical techniques because of idealistic reasons: by creating medical devices I am helping to create a better world. That idea suited me much more than creating luxury products for our consuming behaviour.
The company I worked for produced diagnostic imaging equipment such as: X-ray equipment, CT- and MRI scanners. These are high tech – low volume devices which are produced against high quality standards. I started as a System Tester to test the MRI scanners. I this job I became familiar with the entire scanner, from the inside and the outside. Especially the faultfinding within the system interested me: digging into the MRI system until you have found the location of the error, prior to handing over the problem to an expert on this matter. Because of my urge to dig deeper within the components of the MRI scanner, I became an expert of major parts of the MRI scanner.
Later on in my career I started dealing with setting up and improving the production processes. For me, the biggest motivation always is the enormous development the industry pass through. There has been an incredible rise in technical development, such as automation, robotisation, digitalisation, miniaturisation. Everything has to be smaller, quicker and cheaper.
After this period, I started focusing on quality aspects within the high-tech medical device industry. My main focus became managing product quality received. Also, the globalisation on quality standards has gone through massive developments. At first, every country had its own standards, think of BS (Great-Britain), Jan (Japan) and CSA (Canada). But the development of ISO-9001 an ISO-13485 created more cohesion. On the other hand, the FDA 21 CFR 820 standard has become more and more important as well. The control and management of the quality of medical devices became of great importance. Everything must be better, safer and more sustainable.
At a certain point I started working on an interim basis. Because of my knowledge on medical devices I was approached by QTC Recruitment, a recruitment organisation working in the life sciences industry. They know the job market of the medical devices industry, as well as the ins and outs of interim jobs. Together with QTC Recruitment I made a desirable job profile, and we came to an agreeable hourly rate indication. After a short period of time QTC Recruitment had found a match for me as a QA Consultant at a Belgian company which produces catheters, seringes, infusion devices, etc. This job fitted me so well, that the time to travel to work did not bother me at all. The company was focused on the mass production of implantable devices, which gave me the possibility to become familiar with the other side of the medical devices spectrum.
Can you relate to Bert’s story, or are your experiences different? Let us know and send an email with your story to info@medicaldevicescommunity.com!
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