Five years later: Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, the world discovered how unprepared it was for a pandemic such as COVID-19. Emergency rooms struggled with the sudden influx of critically ill patients as the virus rapidly spread across continents, finding themselves short of medical supplies such as ventilators and diagnostic equipment for patients as well as personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers.

These early days of COVID were grim, but they also led to increasing innovation and collaboration in the manufacturing industry, with companies ranging from small startups to major corporations such as General Motors turning their focus to producing emergency medical supplies.

Three New York companies were among the standouts dropping everything and joining forces to develop and manufacture lifesaving equipment in 2020. Product development company 10XBeta, venture platform Newlab, and tech manufacturing company Boyce Technologies worked together to create the Spiro Wave, a low-cost, automated ventilator designed, manufactured, and granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in less than a month. Thousands of the ventilators were deployed during the pandemic, and 10xBeta is currently designing a portable version of the device geared toward emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and other mobile care providers.

While it’s heartening to know there are so many skilled, dedicated people in the manufacturing industry willing to step up and help in an emergency, it’s crucial for the United States and the world as a whole to remember the lessons learned from COVID-19 and ensure we’re not caught off guard again.

Localization, diversification build resilience

“A lot of the medical industries learned supply chains shouldn’t be hyper centralized or monopolized,” says Marcel Botha, CEO of 10XBeta. He describes how, in the last four decades, numerous original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) relied on the same components from the same suppliers – for example, most ventilator manufacturers had been using the same pressure sensor, which quickly sold out when the pandemic began.

In response, the Spiro Wave creators used a manual bag squeezing technology for their device, while incorporating the safety and control features a pneumatic ventilator would have. This resourcefulness led to an inexpensive, quickly deployable piece of equipment with the same functionality as a much pricier, more complex equivalent.

The collaboration between the New York companies also highlighted the efficiency of localized production compared to the globalized supply chain standard, which sees products regularly passing through hundreds if not thousands of pairs of hands across continents. If you lose several people in that chain overnight due to widespread lockdowns, as occurred in 2020, the whole system screeches to a halt.

Another lesson of the pandemic, according to Botha, is the United States has become far too reliant on other countries for high-value manufacturing, particularly in healthcare.

“A lot of money is in automotive, aerospace, and defense, but healthcare, which should be domiciled in-country, is largely affected by this trend of globalization,” he says. “This became hyper apparent with everything from PPE to ventilators to concentrators and chemicals.”

Taking the next steps

So what if another disaster happens – on a regional, national, or global level? Have we learned enough from COVID-19 to meet the next crisis in a more prepared way?

Botha believes we’ve learned, but not enough to successfully handle a disaster if one happened tomorrow. “We haven’t built the resilience systems at scale to handle another pandemic yet,” he says. “We haven’t addressed issues of national stockpile replenishment, modernization, macro investment in U.S. manufacturing. It’s happening, but it’s definitely not happening fast enough.”

To be adequately prepared, the U.S. needs to build a self-sufficient advanced manufacturing system resilient to disruption. One major aspect of this is ensuring diversification of suppliers – we should have at least 10 suppliers for every critical component, Botha says, rather than one supplier as is common now. Every region should be able to respond dynamically to manufacturing needs.

Since the pandemic, 10XBeta has been dedicated to building this type of ecosystem. The company is building a co-located boutique prototyping and manufacturing facility in New York to showcase the possibilities of developing, prototyping, manufacturing, and shipping a medical device all from one 12,000ft2 space. What does it look like, Botha asks, if every state has 50 of these facilities, or if there’s one in every city, and each facility is responsible for shipping 1,000 units in three months?

It’s quite a departure from the current model of megacorporations with tendrils everywhere, but ideally it would be distributed and replicable with best practices shared to ensure widespread success.

Networking across borders

To create a truly resilient supply chain, changes are needed on national and global levels with industry and government support and cooperation. Individual companies of any size, however, can begin pivoting toward stronger practices.

The first step is to combine forecasting models with better inventory retention. Currently, most manufacturers take a Just-in-Time (JIT) approach to production. This has obvious benefits, especially in medical manufacturing where technology changes rapidly and personalized medicine is in increasing demand. But it also leaves us vulnerable in emergency situations – at minimum, Botha says, a company should be able to withstand a six-month delay of critical parts.

He also reiterates the importance of collaboration. The partnership between 10XBeta, Newlab, and Boyce Technologies can be seen as a microcosm of what the manufacturing industry could look like globally. If international companies were incentivized, politically or financially, to work together in emergency periods, we could build a much stronger network.

“We see that happening in defense. We don’t see it happening in healthcare,” Botha comments. “I think, strategically, we should take healthcare as seriously as defense, to tackle it with the same fervor for innovation and collaboration with our allies.”

Shifting technology, ideology

Technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI), including predictive analytics, will have a major impact on inventory management in the future, Botha says. Automation and additive manufacturing (AM) aren’t new, but they’ve come down in price significantly in recent years and are more widely accessible. Botha points to metal AM as a technology that has advanced and become less expensive since 2020, creating new possibilities for producing orthopedic implants, oxygen manifolds, and miniaturized components.

Other than potential future emergencies, Botha points to geopolitical tensions and tariffs as the most pressing challenges currently facing the medical device supply chain. He’s optimistic, though, and sees an ideology shift already happening in early-stage companies prioritizing agile, launch-ready technology.

“From robotics and musculoskeletal kinetic companies to new drug development to diagnostic devices and therapeutic devices, we see access to new innovation,” Botha says. “The rate is increasing because it’s becoming easier to manufacture low-volume products stateside. For the longest time, the large multinational medical device companies controlled what we saw as new in the market, and they controlled that by acquiring a lot of these fledgling companies before they launched. But we’re seeing a lot more consumer-facing brands. We’re seeing a lot more standalone brands with the ability to launch with venture money into the market and be competitive. And we see much higher value early-stage innovations because they’re more agile in terms of how they launch.”

To that end, 10XBeta also acts as a venture studio supporting multiple medtech companies. As the five-year anniversary of the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic passes, we may not yet be ready for another crisis of that scale, but by prioritizing a diversified supply chain and thinking proactively, the medical manufacturing industry can increase its resilience – not only in case of emergency, but in its everyday operations.

10XBeta
https://www.10xbeta.com

Boyce Technologies
https://www.boycetechnologies.com

Newlab
https://www.newlab.com

About the author: Clare Scott is managing editor for GIE Media’s Manufacturing Group of publications. She can be reached at CScott@Gie.net.