San Diego Business Journal: Tech Firms Fill Eternal Demand for Health Care Products

 Tech Firms Fill Eternal Demand for Health Care Products

TECHNOLOGY: Devices Include Surgical and Visual Aid Tools, Speech-Recognition System

By Mark Larson

Technology firms making medical devices in San Diego, across the country and globally these days are in a position other tech-developing firms envy.

They’re selling products into the health care consumer industry. Unlike other markets, health care has remained bulletproof during the downturn, and continues to demand new products.

Last week, the Business Journal talked to three small, locally based technology development firms about their latest market-driven innovations, aimed at niches where they see demand.


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Visual Impairment Technology

Optelec U.S. of Vista in March released three new products aimed at helping those with especially poor eyesight prevent macular degeneration or glaucoma, for instance.

One is a hand-held device which stores information, with a screen that can zoom in on data and text making them large enough to read; another magnifies the visual content of a desktop computer; the other is a portable video magnifier that plugs into a laptop computer.

“We make technology that allows low-sight people to maintain their ability to read and write,” says Andre Hardy, Optelec’s sales and marketing chief. The Dutch-owned company has subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Holland and Germany.

Aging baby boomers with sight problems are driving the market for these products, says Hardy, spurring the company to develop increasingly sophisticated products. Optelec’s products are software driven, he says, so they can be updated when improved, a feature he contends puts the company ahead of competitors. It has a list of independent distributors on its Web site for interested buyers to contact. Its products cost from $700 to $3,000.

Optelec has 35 employees in San Diego, and last year’s sales were about $17.5 million. Sales in the first quarter of this year outpaced the same 2008 period by 40 percent, says Hardy.

He theorizes the strong sales are because customers tend to have from $65,000 to $85,000 in annual income, and they need something to help them see better.

“This isn’t a luxury device,” says Hardy. “It allows a person to read.”

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