Catheter Research, Inc. has grown to be a developer and manufacturer of medical devices, specializing in catheters and tubing products. Our products are sold almost exclusively on an OEM basis. CRI offers complete solutions for design, development, and manufacturing problems with medical devices. We can provide you with a single delivery of three prototype catheters for a feasibility study, or a monthly supply of 250,000 complete, packaged, sterile products. Our goal is to provide cost-effective product development and quality OEM medical device manufacturing.

Capabilities

Technology

Catheter Research, Inc. was founded on the technology of steering using nitinol. Imbedding an element of shape memory nitinol in the tip of a catheter could provide active, on-demand steering. Since the early days of CRI this technology has been proven to be effective in certain applications, namely small and/or long, flexible products. Mechanical, pull-wire, technology competes with nitinol steering. Mechanical steering requires that the tension of the pull wires be transmitted to the tip of a catheter. For that reason the catheter shaft must have enough column strength to support that pull force. With short, stiff catheters mechanical steering is effective. In long, small OD, and flexible catheters, nitinol steering may be the only effective method.

CRI has numerous patents describing various catheters and similar medical devices with single and multiple elements of shape memory nitinol. These elements of nitinol are employed to change the shape and/or stiffen a catheter. We expect this technology to become more and more valuable as medicine moves toward less invasive surgery and smaller catheters and tools are required. This is a futuristic technology.