Medical Textiles

Focus Group Visits the College

          On Friday, April 19th ten medical textiles companies took part in a focus group here at the College of Textiles.  The focus group was centered around a new concentration in Medical Textiles that the college is going to start offering in the fall.  The faculty steering committee has been developing the curriculum for this concentration and it was time to receive feedback on they courses that we would potentially be offering.

                The focus group  participants were:  Dorothy Abel, of the US Food and Drug Adminstration Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Denise Couture, of Kimberly Clark, John Evans of BSN Medical, C.C. Friedheim of Hill-Rom, Skott Greenhalgh of Prodesco, Micheal Helmus of Boston Scientific, John Smith of Precision Fabrics Group, Jim Snipes of Carolina Narrow Fabrics, Joel Williams of Becton Dickinson, and Howard Zins of Howard Zins Associates.  These companies show a variety of range in the medical products they produce, but that was the point.  The college wanted to cover a wide array of the industry in an effort to position our students to be wanted by many sectors of the medical textiles industry.

                Each of these participants provided critical information to help enhance the education that our graduates will be receiving with this concentration. This will be a truly unique program because no one else in the country has a program that brings together the medical industry with textiles.  This concentration will offer three different tracks:  BioMedical Textiles, Medical Textiles, and Healthcare Product Management.

                In the months ahead please look in the Wolftext for follow up articles about our Medical Textiles concentration.