VEXTEC Technology Featured in Missile Defense Agency Report on Health Care

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. - Nov. 18, 2014 - PRLog -- VEXTEC® Corporation is featured in the technology applications report just released by the US Department of Defense’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA). The report entitled, "Healthy Innovation - Missile Defense Technologies Applied: Medical and Safety Solutions", focuses on how improvements in health care have been spawned in unexpected ways by missile defense technology development. Technologies develop by twenty different companies are highlighted. The article on VEXTEC discusses how VEXTEC’s Virtual Life Management® (VLM®) improves product safety and reliability using computer simulation. Computational software tools predict damage over time to help engineers build better products.

Physical testing of new medical devices to determine their safety and reliability is expensive: the devices tested are already designed and manufactured, and therefore must be tested after the fact. If a failure occurs, what needs to be changed? This problem exists not only for medical devices but from weapons systems to micro-electronics. Ideally, the time and place to identify potential problems is at the drawing board, using computational simulation.

VEXTEC Corporation was founded in 2000 to develop a computational process to predict product safety and reliability. A that time, MDA was developing lightweight, strong, and flexible composite structures but was concerned they would fracture and fail. MDA awarded VEXTEC an SBIR contract to develop new engineering tools to evaluate missile structure concepts based on predicted reliability, performance, and manufacturing costs. Under the SBIR, VEXTEC developed capabilities that led to the VLM software product, a computational tool that simulates the behavior of very complex systems, parts, and equipment right down to damage occurring at the material microstructure level. VLM simulations explain why, how, when, and where product damage will occur over time and what can be done to improve product safety and reliability.

Several medical device companies such as Boston Scientific have used VLM to simulate bench testing of stents and electrical leads. The medical device market is a demanding commercial market since the reliability of an implanted device can be a life-or-death issue. VLM affords medical device makers the capability to make design decisions before extensive physical testing and prototyping. VLM helps companies reduce the time and cost of product development and certification while supporting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) goals of getting effective and safe treatments to patients more quickly. The full article can be viewed online at https://vextec.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/mda_healthy_in...

VEXTEC (http://www.vextec.com) was founded in 2000 and developed its patented technology primarily through Department of Defense Small Business Innovative Research programs. VEXTEC now offers its Virtual Life Management software and services to the medical device industry (http://www.vextec.com/PDFs/VEXTECCaseStudyMedicalImplantW...), including companies such as Boston Scientific.