The Scottsdale facility includes a 22,000 square foot cleanroom and a paperless floor control system. There are 50 employees at the new facility, with employment expected to jump to 175 during the next year.

St. Jude Medical also has a pacemaker systems manufacturing plant in Veddesta, Sweden, along with manufacturing and headquarters facilities in Sylmar, Calif., north of Los Angeles.

While hospitals and governments struggle with the new era of expense containment, manufacturers see improved technology as a key to lower costs, and are pursuing new methodologies with a vengeance.

Some companies opened brand new facilities in recent months, but the trend in manufacturing continues toward growth through acquisitions and joint ventures. As far as new products go, anyone wanting to peer over the horizon only had to attend one of several medical device shows to see what was in the offing.

Molded Rubber and Plastic Corp., a manufacturer of rigid and thermoplastic components for medical devices, has acquired about an acre of land and a 10,000 square foot building next to its current facilities in Butler, Wis. The company has a four-year plan to upgrade its injection molding equipment, as well as expand its liquid injection molding of silicone resins.

Company president Thomas Brunner said the expansion has been fueled in part by the rising demand in the medical equipment and device markets.

Coherent Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., recently completed a new laser diode manufacturing facility. The new 10,000 square foot factory brings the processing, packaging and testing under one roof. The laser systems are used for medical, scientific and commercial applications.

The completion of the new facilities comes on the heels of Coherent's acquisition of Tutcore, a manufacturer of aluminum-free semiconductor wafers for laser diodes. The wafer plant is located in Tampere, Finland.

Griffith Micro Science, of Harentals, Belgium, recently opened a new steam sterilization facility in Zoetermeer, Netherlands. According to European Marketing Director Ron Peacock, the demand for steam sterilization is being driven by regulatory requirements to reduce residuals in products sterilized by a practice called "EtO."

"It is motivated by manufacturers who are resisting the use of more expensive gamma-stable materials at a time when cost containment is a priority for health care," Peacock said.

General Scanning Inc. has acquired View Engineering, makers of laser- and vision-based non-contact measurement and inspection systems. The company's manufacturing facilities will remain in Simi Valley, Calif., and will be known as General Scanning Inc., View Engineering Division.

A Boulder, Colo., research and development company, Larren Corp., has been acquired by Battelle, of Columbus, Ohio. Battelle now has R & D facilities in more than 40 cities worldwide, and specializes in the development of new technologies, including the field of medicine.

Medtronic, a Minneapolis, Minn., company specializing in implantable and invasive therapies, has been active on several fronts. It has formed a strategic alliance with Computer Motion, Inc., Goleta, Calif., to promote CM's computer-assisted robotics systems for minimally invasive cardiac surgery.

Medtronic has also acquired the centrifugal blood cell-washing system from a Swiss company called perHop. The perHop system plays a key role in autotransfusion, the process during which a patient's blood is cleansed and held for subsequent use during surgery, thereby minimizing use of banked blood and reducing concerns about transmissions of disease.

Medtronic has also purchased a minority position in Interventional Innovations of St. Paul, Minn., which has developed technology for delivery of radiation within the body's blood vessels.

ATL Ultrasound has set up a company called ATL China with headquarters in Beijing to go after the growing ultrasound diagnostics market in China.

"With over 1.2 billion people and more than 200,000 medical institutions, the People's Republic of China is a market of key strategic importance and opportunity for ATL," said Dennis Fill, ATL Chairman and CEO. ATL has been marketing products to China since 1978.

Eastman Kodak Co. has agreed to acquire Nova MicroSonics, which is the digital image management division of ATL Ultrasound. Nova MicroSonics is based in Allendale, N.J., and employs 100 people. The acquisition will become part of Kodak's Health Imaging Division.

Beckman Instruments, Fullerton, Calif., has greatly expanded its line of clinical laboratory testing with the purchase of ACCESS immunochemistry products from Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur, a division of the French health company Sanofi.

GE Medical Systems of Milwaukee has entered into a joint venture agreement with Elscint Ltd. to engineer and manufacturer scanners and workstations for the nuclear medicine imaging market. The facilities will be located in Haifa, Israel.

Nuclear medicine technology allows physicians to see images of body functions, and is used for the early detection of cancer, heart disease, circulatory problems, kidney malfunctions and other abnormalities.

Germany is one of the leading countries in the European Union in the field of medical technological manufacturing. Two regions in particular, North Rhine/Westphalia and the Berlin/Brandenburg area, are making large strides in new innovations.

The North Rhine/Westphalia (NRW) area now accounts for 13 percent of the medical technology produced in Germany. Officials have set up a body called "Medical Technology TZ NRW," which offers consultation to foreign companies on site selection for medical manufacturing, partnerships for research and development projects, attainment of certificates and permits, and market entry in the NRW region.

NRW hosts the MEDICA Trade Fair in Dusseldorf each year, and boasts Germany's densest area of R & D centers, as well as the most hospitals and doctors in the country.

In the Berlin/Brandenburg area, approximately 400 companies are involved in research, development and the manufacture of medical technology. Berlin has 40 manufacturers in future-oriented segments of health care such as laser technology, optics, biomedics, and electronic metrology.

The region has 12 technology transfer centers which promote a dialogue between the scientific community and the business world. Special subsidy programs are sponsored by the government to promote medical technology. Numerous facilities are available in Berlin for foreign manufacturers, along with state consultants who help pave the way for making important contacts.