Whether you’re headed to the dentist, your doctor’s office or the drug store, you’re probably encountering products made in the midstate. From dental drills to syringes, health care products originating here are being distributed all over the country and overseas. Besides creating jobs in central Pennsylvania, these companies are developing cutting-edge technology and products to improve health care worldwide. Here’s a look at five local companies that manufacture or contribute to the technology behind some health products that you might be using.
If you’ve used a nicotine patch to stop smoking or popped a Gas-X dissolvable strip into your mouth,Manufacturers and exporters of impact socket, you’ve benefited from a product made in Glen Rock, York County.
Adhesives Research manufactures component materials that go into health-related applications such as adhesives, tapes, films and laminates.
“There are three broad areas where these are used,” explained George Cramer, vice president of marketing and commercial development. “One would be drug delivery, such as the transdermal nicotine patch. We make the adhesive that goes on the patch.
Another example is the dissolvable film technology, like you have with a Gas-X strip.”
A second area where you might encounter their products is diagnostics, Cramer said. Adhesives Research makes the coated plastic film used in test strips for pregnancy tests and to monitor blood glucose levels.
“We also work in the area of wound care applications with advanced wound care — things like dressings used in chronic wounds. These products would be used in the hospital setting,” he said.
Adhesives Research is also involved in a unique fiber technology in which the company makes the fibers that could be used for implantable textiles such as a hernia mesh, Cramer said. The fibers may also be used in bioreabsorbable textiles that dissolve in the body.
The company, which began in 1961 and moved to Glen Rock in 1974, is composed of two groups, Adhesives Research, which encompasses fittings for the medical device industry, and ARx, which makes innovative pharmaceutical products into which drugs are incorporated.
Its 100-plus-acre campus in Glen Rock employs 400 people. Adhesives Research also operates manufacturing facilities in Ireland and Colombia and sells products worldwide.
If you’re diabetic and give yourself insulin shots, you might be using syringes made in Conewago Twp., York County.
The company’s signature product is its safety syringes, engineered with a passive needle retraction mechanism that pulls the needle back into the barrel after injection, virtually eliminating the risk of a needle stick injury.
Unilife supplies ready-to-fill syringes to pharmaceutical companies that fill the syringes with a drug and ship it to hospitals and drug stores, said Stephen Allan, vice president of marketing for Unilife, which opened its 165,000-square-foot global headquarters off Interstate 83 between Harrisburg and York in December 2010.
Unilife also makes syringes available for use by health care workers and for purchase in drug stores by people who self-administer prescription medication.
“We have a number of core competitive features that make our syringes unique, including auto-activation of the safety mechanism and operator-controlled speed at which the needle is retracted from the body into the barrel of the syringe,” Allan said.
The company, which has about 150 employees, began in Australia 10 years ago and moved to Pennsylvania in 2008 after purchasing Integrated BioSciences Inc., a local high-tech manufacturing company.
The company expects to manufacture 400 million syringes annually by 2014, Allan said. Unilife is also working on auto-injectors for use with its pre-filled syringes that would allow patients at home to dispense medication at the push of a button and on a pump infusion system designed for drugs that are administered over minutes rather than seconds.
“It’s all about making delivery of drugs to patients in their own homes safer, simpler and more convenient,” Allan said. “The ease of use will, in turn, improve therapy compliance.”
If you’ve used a nicotine patch to stop smoking or popped a Gas-X dissolvable strip into your mouth,Manufacturers and exporters of impact socket, you’ve benefited from a product made in Glen Rock, York County.
Adhesives Research manufactures component materials that go into health-related applications such as adhesives, tapes, films and laminates.
“There are three broad areas where these are used,” explained George Cramer, vice president of marketing and commercial development. “One would be drug delivery, such as the transdermal nicotine patch. We make the adhesive that goes on the patch.
Another example is the dissolvable film technology, like you have with a Gas-X strip.”
A second area where you might encounter their products is diagnostics, Cramer said. Adhesives Research makes the coated plastic film used in test strips for pregnancy tests and to monitor blood glucose levels.
“We also work in the area of wound care applications with advanced wound care — things like dressings used in chronic wounds. These products would be used in the hospital setting,” he said.
Adhesives Research is also involved in a unique fiber technology in which the company makes the fibers that could be used for implantable textiles such as a hernia mesh, Cramer said. The fibers may also be used in bioreabsorbable textiles that dissolve in the body.
The company, which began in 1961 and moved to Glen Rock in 1974, is composed of two groups, Adhesives Research, which encompasses fittings for the medical device industry, and ARx, which makes innovative pharmaceutical products into which drugs are incorporated.
Its 100-plus-acre campus in Glen Rock employs 400 people. Adhesives Research also operates manufacturing facilities in Ireland and Colombia and sells products worldwide.
If you’re diabetic and give yourself insulin shots, you might be using syringes made in Conewago Twp., York County.
The company’s signature product is its safety syringes, engineered with a passive needle retraction mechanism that pulls the needle back into the barrel after injection, virtually eliminating the risk of a needle stick injury.
Unilife supplies ready-to-fill syringes to pharmaceutical companies that fill the syringes with a drug and ship it to hospitals and drug stores, said Stephen Allan, vice president of marketing for Unilife, which opened its 165,000-square-foot global headquarters off Interstate 83 between Harrisburg and York in December 2010.
Unilife also makes syringes available for use by health care workers and for purchase in drug stores by people who self-administer prescription medication.
“We have a number of core competitive features that make our syringes unique, including auto-activation of the safety mechanism and operator-controlled speed at which the needle is retracted from the body into the barrel of the syringe,” Allan said.
The company, which has about 150 employees, began in Australia 10 years ago and moved to Pennsylvania in 2008 after purchasing Integrated BioSciences Inc., a local high-tech manufacturing company.
The company expects to manufacture 400 million syringes annually by 2014, Allan said. Unilife is also working on auto-injectors for use with its pre-filled syringes that would allow patients at home to dispense medication at the push of a button and on a pump infusion system designed for drugs that are administered over minutes rather than seconds.
“It’s all about making delivery of drugs to patients in their own homes safer, simpler and more convenient,” Allan said. “The ease of use will, in turn, improve therapy compliance.”
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