Focus Area

Healthcare

Helping people live life to the full has always been at the heart of our versatile solutions for healthcare. With our Next concepts, we help you make these solutions work for everyone, meeting patients’ needs for safety, performance, and comfort alongside greater personalization.
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Challenge: Enabling people to live life to the full

More healthcare devices are now available than ever – from stents, sutures, and artificial vessel grafts to wearable medical devices that monitor complex medical conditions. But there are also growing demands on these devices. Medical conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and vascular diseases are increasingly common, and wounds are as prevalent as ever. This makes it even more important for healthcare devices to offer versatile comfort, flexible convenience, and improved sustainability, so that the people using them can continue living their lives to the full.

Key Drivers

  • Comfort and convenience

    Comfort and convenience

    Patients and other people using healthcare devices want to be able to maintain their normal lives as far as possible. Comfortable, flexible materials and increasingly smaller, thinner devices help provide this freedom.

  • Smart solutions, produced efficiently

    Smart solutions, produced efficiently

    Personalization and patient remote monitoring have a major role to play in tomorrow’s healthcare advances. Given this, manufacturers need ways to continue delivering smart and customized products at even higher volumes.

  • Repeated use for reduced resources

    Repeated use for reduced resources

    Just like in many other industries, healthcare manufacturers are feeling the need to reduce emissions and waste. They’re doing this through solutions that are not only less resource-intensive to produce, but also reusable – particularly for wearables.

Status: Versatile comfort meets increased efficiency

Whether it’s skin patches, gloves, wearables, or other electromedical equipment, patients need their medical devices to be comfortable, safe, and effective. And of course, they must still comply with strict standards for medical products. Our polyurethane foams, adhesives, and coating solutions help to meet these needs – and enable solutions that are tailorable in form, shape, and size.

Take wound management, for instance, where there is a growing need for higher performance and improved haptics. Materials with strong friction management, breathability, pressure and shear management, and low trauma release help dressing manufacturers address these needs. In particular, adhesives based on our Baymedix® materials enable optimal moisture management, for breathable, absorbent dressings that stay in place. The adjustable peel strengths of these adhesives also make it easy to achieve low-trauma removal.

Process efficiency and sustainability are also key priorities for dressing manufacturers. With easy-to-combine raw materials, this is made easier. Baymedix®-based wound dressings can be produced in a roll-to-roll process. The adhesives and foams can even be applied directly onto film, eliminating lamination steps. Optimized drying times, reduced waste, and the absence of solvents in the manufacturing process further improve efficiency and sustainability.

Beyond wound dressing, healthcare providers also look for increased functionality, comfort, and miniaturization in smart patches, such as electrocardiography/electromyography (ECG/EMG) patches, which monitor vital patient data. Here again, Baymedix® adhesives and foams and Platilon® TPU films enable skin-friendly, easy-to-remove patches. These materials can also be used as part of a wearable patch sensor concept that we co-developed with accensors, a German sensor technology company. The patch sensor includes a reusable element for reduced waste.

Facts & figures

  • Demand for advanced wound management

    Demand for advanced wound management

    In developed countries, an estimated 1-3% of health care expenses can be attributed to complex wound management. ¹

  • Heart disease remains common

    Heart disease remains common

    It’s estimated that more than half a billion people worldwide are affected by cardiovascular disease. ²

  • Growing interest in wearable devices

    Growing interest in wearable devices

    The global market for wearable medical devices is expected to grow to USD 324.73 billion by 2032. ³

Next: Toward chemistry that works for everyone

In the coming years, medical devices will need to offer even greater levels of comfort and personalization. High-performance coatings and adhesives will be key to meeting a wider range of patient needs, including in next-generation solutions such as invisible under-the-skin devices. Together with partners across the healthcare space, we’ll continue developing solutions for all these applications, designing with re-use in mind to reduce waste in the quest for ever more sophisticated monitoring devices.

Hands-on solutions

Healthcare

  • Case study

    Wearable smart patches

    Baymedix® and Platilon® from Covestro support the in making wearable medical sensors more comfortable.

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In the meantime, feel free to discover our innovative material solutions!

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