NUST-MDDC starts producing cardiac stents
ISLAMABAD:18 august: The National University of Sciences and Technology'S (NUST) Medical Devices Development Centre (MDDC) has started producing cardiac stents (both bare-metal and drug-eluted stents). The team is being headed by Dr Murtaza Najabat Ali, a biomedical engineer at NUST School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. The MDDC is being funded by Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) for the production of cardiac stents and angioplasty balloon catheters. Now MDDC can produce both the cardiac stents. In addition to all this, MDDC is also endeavoring to create an industry-academic linkage in the medical device field, which unfortunately has been non-existent in Pakistan. "At MDDC we intend to do a lot more things like serial production and commercialisation of both products to meet requirement of cost effective and affordable angioplasty kits for the general public at affordable rates. Approximately 450 units of the indigenously developed savior (bare-metal) stents have been successfully implanted in patients till date at Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC) and Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology (RIC) at almost one sixth the price of imported stents available in the market," a press statement issued by the university stated. "In Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Department at NUST - SMME, we have elaborate labs and a pool of striving researchers. We need to harness this resource to develop new devices, medical implants and most importantly the industrial systems, which we have to import at exorbitant cost," it said.
Published in Daily Times, August 18th 2017.
