The rising public awareness on hygienic healthcare and an increasing demand from the overall healthcare industry is acting as a motivating factor for innovating new medical textile products.

Mr. S Thiruppathi, Senior Scientific Officer, South India Textile Research Association (SITRA), spoke to technicaltextile.net about the latest product developments and endeavours to educate manufacturers about growing business opportunities in the medical textiles sector.

He reveals, “SITRA has developed eight new products, such as woven arterial prosthetic and bi-furcated grafts, bamboo fibre-made bandages, Hernia mesh, clinical heart patch, insoles or liners for Diabetic shoes, barbed bi-directional surgical sutures, heart valve fibres and woven surgical gloves with nano finishing.”

Speaking about the association’s recently invented instruments, he says “SITRA has developed a new machine called ‘Bacterial Filtration Efficiency Tester’ which can help in determining the extent to which a given operation theatre apparel filters bacteria trying to pass through it. Besides, we are also in the process of developing Synthetic Blood Penetration Tester.”

Mr. Thiruppathi further informs that SITRA has been organizing several orientation programmes on the topic of growing business prospects in the medical textile sector.

“We conducted a special programme on ‘Business opportunities in Technical Textiles in Karnataka’ at the World Trade Center in Bangalore earlier this month. Around 200 participants from the state of Karnataka attended the programme. We are planning to conduct one more programme at Ahmedabad in the next few days,” he says.