The organization that promotes Scotland's medical technology sector is now doubtful after being told that Scottish Enterprise (SE) would no longer fund it.

Support for Medical Devices in Scotland (MDIS), the trade body launched in 2002, will stop on September 30 when SE expects to have a new "one-stop shop" in place to deliver support across the medical technology, biotech and pharmaceutical sectors.

Organizations from across Europe have been invited to bid for the job of running the new network, as published in the Official Journal for the European Union. It asked for either a single group or a consortium to provide a single point of access for sector support under the "Life Sciences Scotland" banner.
MDIS has received major funding from SE during the past six years, was set up with the aim of becoming self-funding. However, that has proved a struggle as most of MDIS's 86 affiliates are small to medium-sized operations that pay an average membership fee of about 200 pounds a year.

SE spends about 40m pounds a year supporting the country's life sciences sector, which is one of the agency's "priority industries." Its spokeswoman said that although MDIS had played an important role in the development of the medical technology sector it was now appropriate to look at new ways of delivering the overall support package.

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