Why Industry Partnerships Are Critical for Successful Dialysis Medtech Disruption

 

If a small manufacturing organization wants to be a disruptor, embracing industry 4.0 is essential. Marc Nash, VP of Manufacturing at Outset Medical, spoke with DisruptED’s Ron Stefanski on the importance of advanced manufacturing in his organization’s mission to improve dialysis.

Experts often told Nash that only sizeable medical device manufacturers could tackle something as momentous as dialysis, but that is no answer for a disruptor; that’s a challenge.

“You don’t need to have a team of a hundred software developers building out applications for you,” Nash said. “You could start with two or three. You didn’t need monolithic systems that have been out there for a decade. You could take a more agile start-up approach to these projects.”

When Outset Medical started its journey to make an in-home dialysis device, it partnered with Tulip, a frontline operations platform. This partnership helped Outset develop homegrown applications.

“We flipped that paradigm,” Nash said. “We said, we’re going to give it to the process engineers that are going to have to support our operators who build the product, so you better build those applications as good as you can because you’re going to have to support it on the backend. It’s been a huge success thus far.”

Getting employees invested in an advanced manufacturing operation system is essential to its success.

“What we did was brought in not only our managers but our supervisors and employees who work on the floor; we brought them in from day one to learn about the system, for them to participate in designing the different applications we use,” Nash said. “Every single time we release a change to the floor before we release that change, it goes through an operator review to ensure the way we describe it, and the way it’s written is correct, easy for them to understand, and it’s usable.”

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

Sports Ownership
Alts Innovators: Gennaro Leo on Sports Ownership
October 20, 2025

Welcome to the second episode in our mini-series on the alternative asset market. Gennaro Leo is a sports executive and the co-founder of Austin Sports Ventures, a firm that partners with venture capital and private equity firms to invest in and operate assets across professional sports leagues, teams, and high-growth technology startups. In this…

Read More
location-based entertainment
The Business of Play: Building Community Through Location-Based Entertainment
October 19, 2025

From Dallas to New York, cities are reimagining how people play and connect with one another. The rise of “location-based entertainment” (LBE) spots like Topgolf, Sandbox VR, and Goodsurf Beach Club signals a new chapter in the way community and recreation come together. With over 65% of Goodsurf’s visitors returning multiple times a month,…

Read More
Just Thinking
Just Thinking… About How NeuraPoints Is Building the Bridge Between Minds and Machines
October 17, 2025

Artificial intelligence has reached a crucial inflection point. Once imagined as a fast track to artificial general intelligence, the field has instead hit a plateau—prompting leaders, educators, and innovators to rethink AI’s true purpose. As companies and schools race to adopt automation, questions about cost, ethics, and human purpose are rising to the forefront. According…

Read More
college
Gamifying College Readiness: How Loper Makes the Enrollment Journey More Engaging!
October 16, 2025

High schoolers are overwhelmed — and not just by homework. The path to college can feel like a maze of forms, essays, and deadlines, with little guidance on where to begin. A recent survey found that nearly three-quarters of students describe the college application process as “difficult.” For many, that difficulty isn’t academic; it’s…

Read More