Courtesy of Textile Insight
                                                                
Textile Suppliers Examine the Health and Medical Markets

With concerns heightened daily about the HINI virus, following on the heels of last year’s MRSA infection scare, consumers and textiles alike, are becoming increasingly medically minded. Staying healthy used to be a matter of simply keeping fit, and textiles kept pace with fabrics that moved moisture and controlled temperature changes. Now, however, the latest textiles are taking protection from the elements to an advanced level of performance.  

Garments and bedding products are currently the mainstay of textiles designed for health purposes. Yet company execs say other types of products will open the door to significant sales in the future.  For example, padding to alleviate bed sores, linings for casts, and other types of wound healing products are all within the realm of possibility in years to come.

Materials being used include both natural fibers and synthetics.  In addition, the green trend is finding a niche with recycled fabrics slated for medical products.

Greenology, for example, is launching a line of scrubs that uses Repreve recycled material from Unifi in combination with SmartSilver anti-microbial technology.  Cupron applies copper technology to cotton for sheets, while Hologenix works with polyester. 

“We see quite a bit of business going forward (in medical). There is a huge amount of application opportunity,” says Jeff Gabbay, CEO of Cupron.

Sustainable Scrubs
“Our market of retailers is shrinking. Years ago there were lots of retailers in the department store and specialty area, but there are just not as many anymore. Whereas the health care market is growing,” comments Jim Noble, vice president sales Greenology USA.

The company is launching a line of scrubs under the dNh Do No Harm brand that will be sold at retail.

A woven version incorporates a yarn developed with Unifi consisting of 75 percent recycled polyester and 25 percent cotton. The unique blend is a 4.5 ounce poplin with slightly sueded hand. Noble calls it a “brilliant fabric” that dries quickly and has a SmartSilver antimicrobial component.

A knit version is another unique fabric consisting of 95 percent organic cotton with five percent spandex.

This is the first launch from the young Greenology company. Management has moved quickly taking the idea of sustainability to the scrubs market from concept a couple years ago to development and into retail stores this January.
Retailers adopting the dNh Do No Harm line include Life Uniforms out of St. Louis; Smart Scrubs, of Pheonix; Lydia’s and Scrubs & Beyond.

The CDC claims that 1.7 million people contract infections in U.S. hospitals each year. In 1993, there were fewer than 2,000 MRSA infections in U.S. hospitals. By 2005, the figure had shot up to 368,000 according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). By June, 2007, 2.4 percent of all patients had MRSA infections, according to the largest study of its kind, which was published in the American Journal of Infection Control. That would mean 880,000 victims a year.

“People come in with a cold, leave with MRSA. Our product is opposed to germs. It is FDA registered and is Oeko-Tex approved in the yarn version,” Noble explains. “We want to protect the earth, protect the patient, and protect the health care provider.  And we are the first with a recycled poly product.”
 “With dNh Do No Harm we have found an alternative distribution that projects growth.  This is another avenue to explore. What’s out there is a lot of sameness and highly discounted.  There is a need and call for something new and different. Our scrubs are green, with sportswear styling” Noble elaborates.

NanoHorizons SmartSilver is an important feature of the garments. “SmartSilver met every performance and sustainability criteria we set.  SmartSilver was the natural choice for Do No Harm scrubs,” Noble states.
Indeed silver is used in many medical applications for treating and preventing infections in burn victims and newborns, as well as being used in medical devices.

“SmartSilver was developed originally for the medical market,” says Dr. James Delattre, VP global marketing, NanoHorizons Inc. “Now that SmartSilver additives are available for textile and apparel applications, partnering with Greenology to launch a line of antimicrobial scrubs is the perfect extension.”

Heavy Metal
Silver is not the only metal with medical applications. Cupron is making strides in the medical arena with a copper based technology that offers a roster of benefits.

Jeff Gabbay, Cupron CEO, makes the point that Cupron is a medical device company that deals with textiles, rather than a textile company offering medical products.

The company was founded nine years ago, but products are more recent to the market. Gabbay’s goal initially was to find a product to help his son who is highly asthmatic. “I wanted to develop a product that would eliminate dust mites from his mattress.  I wanted something that would kill the mites but not harm humans.” Gabbay recalls. 

When developing the fabric Gabbay went through the entire Periodic table and tried all sorts of metals. He found gold and platinum to work but they are expensive. He found nickel, lead and mercury to work, too, but they are harmful. That left zinc, silver and copper.

Gabbay opted for copper and is achieving good success. He has recently received EPA approval and has gotten registration from the FDA which allows them to sell Cupron sheets and pillowcases in American Hospitals.
He explains that copper has properties that hospitals and consumers want. For instance Cupron products are broad spectrum and not negative to human health. The product has a long life and is sensitive to the issue of pollution. Copper works against bacteria, fungus and viruses.

Cupron’s manufacturing technology permanently binds its proprietary copper compound to textile fibers, non-woven fabrics, paper, latex and other polymeric products.

Up to now, Cupron consumer products have been in the bedding market selling in Bed Bath and Beyond stores. The towels and pillowcases promote no-odor qualities, skin “appearance enhancement” and cleanliness. Gabbay says the company is currently preparing to launch a program with a big retailer, however, he would not reveal the name.

But now, says Gabby, medical is taking off. Industrial is the other area of distribution for Cupron products, which would include military applications.
Gabbays background is in textile engineering and the Cupron staff consists of pHds and doctors. Research, testing labs and offices are based in Israel; manufacturing is done in China and the raw materials facility is in North Carolina.

Gabbay explains that different antimicrobials do different things. “There are biostatic types that do not kill bacteria but inhibit proliferation, and then there other types that kills,” explains Gabbay.  “Consumers hear “antimicrobial” and think “no microbes” but that is not necessarily true. They hear antimicrobial and think it means “no bugs.”

Consumers may not always understand antimicrobials but they do want them. A new product coming to the U.S. market, for instance, is Polygenie.
“People want protection,” says David Parkes, president of Concept III the company representing Polygenie in the U.S. “These days there is lots of noise about germs, infections, etc.,  so antimicrobial products resonate with consumers.”

 Polygenie works by arresting the growth of bacteria so there is no odor, and the product is eco-friendly, having Blue Sign and Okeo-Tex approval. The product is also long lasting with performance good for 70 washings.
Polygenie has a good reputation in Europe where it is used by a number of high-tech brands. It is also co-branding in Europe with W.L. Gore.  Having firmly established the brand in Europe it now comes stateside via Concept III.
“Consumers find it easy to understand odor control, but not so easy to understand arresting bacteria growth. Yet they want it and they like it,” says Parkes. 

Let There Be Light
Hologenix is finding its footing in the marketplace after a few years of coming into its own. The company was formed in January 2003 as a joint venture with Wellman and Holofiber. Following an investment in the company in early 2007, Seth Casden and his brother bought out Wellman several months later in September 2007.

Next came a restructuring and renaming the brand with a re-launch of Celliant in January 2008. Casden was named CEO in January of this year.

In recent years the company has conducted studies and branched into new markets. A study published in March 09 was particularly significant showing the effectiveness of Celliant in reducing pain.

The research that led to the creation of Celliant began in the 1990s when a team of pioneers in the field of alternative medicine visited Asia and observed the use of several natural substances that were thought to have a positive effect on health. After seven years of research and study, the team was able to integrate these materials into fabrics.

The company’s message is how their product increases oxygen, thus increasing blow flow which is shown to reduce pain. The specially formulated material can be knit, woven, or added to fabrics.

“We think of ourselves as a technology company and our technology is delivered through a fiber.  We are science-based and research-based and are not about putting bells and whistles on a fiber,” says Casden.

The technology is based on light therapy, which is an emerging field of science. It is not a compression product as Celliant does not need to be in contact with the skin. Nor is it a phase change material.

 “We use an optically responsive material that captures and stores body energy emissions and then releases them back. There are 11 ingredients involved including sun block ingredients,” explains Casden.

Right now the company is growing in the active/outdoor apparel market with new programs planned for Fall 2010.

Bedding is also an emerging market for Celliant products. Recently the company partnered with the T3 firm to market a Recovery Mattress designed to provide better sleep and faster recovery while sleeping through use of Celliant.

Casden says the company is working on getting FDA approval, which could take as little as six months, but more likely as long as two years. “Our position with the FDA is that we have similar technology to LED devices currently approved and used in physical therapy, but our tech is powered by the human body, not LED lights.