Costa Rica

The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation is launching a slate of educational programs for medtech regulatory and quality assurance professionals in the Latin American country.

C-TAP, the voluntary initiative aimed at making vaccines, tests, treatments and other health technologies to fight COVID-19 accessible to all, has been launched by the WHO, in partnership with Costa Rica.

Public health advocates say that commercial concerns must take a back seat to health interests if COVID-19 technologies are to be made available to those who need them. But industry says that relaxing IP protections is not the solution and that many companies have already invested significant amounts of money in potential new treatments and vaccines.

Intellectual property rights are under the microscope as countries prepare to provide affordable and timely access to pandemic technologies.

Costa Rica's medical device firms rung up $2.2bn in sales in 2015, making devices the country's No. 1 export.

On this week's Medtech Insight podcast: US congressional hearing highlights India’s efforts to place price caps on foreign-made devices; Senate health-care bill nixes device tax; Costa Rican quality control experts lean on each other for industry education; US FDA issues a draft guidance on electronic records and signatures.

"Pura Vida" – a Spanish phrase meaning the "pure" or "simple life" – isn't just the unofficial motto of Costa Rica; rather, it's a state of mind, locals say. But as more and more medical device manufacturing facilities pop up in the tiny Central American nation, quality assurance professionals there have discovered that ensuring top-notch product quality doesn't necessarily make life simpler. To jump that hurdle, QA experts from a variety of firms – including Medtronic, Precision Concepts and Creganna Medical – have banded together to lean on each other as they search for solutions to quality systems issues, as well as knowledgeable input on hot quality and compliance topics.

GSK closing Costa Rica consumer product plant; PPI study authors suggest physicians’ counsel on OTC use; and Makesense topicals recall.

GSK closing Costa Rica consumer product plant; PPI study authors suggest physicians’ counsel on OTC use; and Makesense topicals recall.