Join Us Weekly — Announcing DEVICE L❤️VE Live!

The current pandemic is challenging for everyone to varying degrees. R&Q has the utmost respect, appreciation, and love for healthcare workers and all frontline workers across the globe. Our mission from the start has been to improve people's lives and our announcement today has regulatory and quality medical device professionals in mind. There is no better time than now for all of us in and connected to the healthcare industry to be at our best for patients requiring medical care and the healthcare workers providing it.

Along with rallying around one another for support, sharing and discussing the latest industry news, regulation changes, pressure points, and potential solutions to problems can be invaluable for us all. Actual solutions are obviously important and our company name isn't Regulatory & Quality Solutions by chance! Those of us not on the frontlines and practicing social distancing (the majority of regulatory and quality pros we know) are also craving connection. FaceTime, Zoom, Houseparty, or whatever your app of choice for connecting with family and friends is great, but what about all those cancelled conferences and networking events? We still need to connect with and learn from each other professionally.

For all of those reasons and following in the footsteps of our monthly webinars (which will continue), we're excited to announce a new live and interactive weekly show: DEVICE L❤️VE Live!

Show #1 will be next Friday, April 17th.

How will it go? Each show will center around a specific newsworthy topic and bring together experienced thought leaders on camera to discuss it. For example, next week we'll discuss moving medical device manufacturing out of China. Weekly topics will be chosen based on what challenges our clients are facing and what our own experts are reading about.

The sessions will depend on your questions. We'll bring some client questions to the table and some of our own, but the direction each show takes will be dictated by you. Ask questions live and if fellow attendees want to see it answered by our panelists, they'll be able to easily upvote it. This brings the most popular questions to the top of the list for the moderator to ask the panelists about.

Read on for more information on next week's show and subscribe to our blog to learn of the weekly topics.

#1 — Moving medical device manufacturing out of China.

The medical device industry’s reliance on China for suppliers, manufacturing sites, and finished medical devices is widespread and well understood. In 2019, the U.S. President leveraged the “International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)” in an effort to urge United States companies to begin searching for production alternatives outside of China. The act authorizes the President to regulate foreign economic transactions when a national emergency is declared to manage any unusual and extraordinary foreign source threat to the U.S.

Fast forward to 2020 and we now know that COVID-19 is magnifying the vulnerability of the U.S. and other countries using China for the production of medical devices. Few could predict that we would be faced with the current struggle to obtain a device as simple, yet critical, as a face mask.

Device manufactures have a good handle on how to relocate manufacturing into China; we’ve all been on at least one of those projects in our careers. But how do we move it back out? What are the obstacles and strategies for success? 

In this show, we’ll discuss all of the hurdles you may encounter and talk with experts about strategies to overcome them. Please come with questions!