BUSINESS PLANNING & TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
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Ireland is home to operations for 15 of the world's top 25 medtech companies. Abbott, Becton Dickinson, Boston Scientific, Essilor, GE Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson, Stryker, and Tyco Healthcare—all multifacility operations—have 26 separate Irish manufacturing facilities among them. And in addition to its popularity as a manufacturing location, the country is rapidly increasing its research and development (R&D) activities in the medical device industry.
The Irish-based medtech sector employs more than 26,000 people in 130 companies with sales in excess of $8 billion annually and annual growth approaching 16%. As a result, this sector in Ireland has comparable scale to some of the largest medtech clusters globally, such as those in Minnesota and Massachusetts.
Medical device companies that have chosen Ireland as a base for developing, manufacturing, and marketing their products encompass a diverse range of products, including disposable plastic and wound-care products, precision metal implants such as pacemakers, microelectronic devices, orthopaedic implants, diagnostics, contact lenses, and stents. Apart from further high-technology manufacturing projects, an increasing number of existing facilities in Ireland are adding global support functions such as shared financial and information technology support services and global supply-chain management.
