Network rules | Medical Device Manufacturing

What this page is

This page describes how the referral desk and the directory behave. It carries a version number and an effective date. If we change how the desk works, this page changes first and the version moves, so a reader can tell whether the rules they read still hold. When the version moves, what changed is listed at the foot of the page.

Some of what follows is a mechanism, meaning the system enforces it or you can inspect it. Some is a policy, meaning it is a rule we hold ourselves to.

Who owns this

Medical Device Manufacturing is published by Life Science Outsourcing, Inc. Life Science Outsourcing is a medical device contract manufacturer. Editorial decisions are made independently of the owner and of sponsors, and coverage of Life Science Outsourcing is supplier news like any other.

Shared infrastructureThis site keeps its own database, separate from the databases behind Life Science Outsourcing’s own websites. It runs on the same server, behind the same web front end and on the same database server as those sites.

Competitors of Life Science Outsourcing may list here. Listing is free, permanent and unlimited, and a competitor is verified by the same checks, ordered by the same rules and labeled the same way as anyone else.

The categories the publisher serves

There are five publisher served service categories. A request in one of them routes to Life Science Outsourcing alone and to no other member. They are the five below, read from the same list the request form marks as publisher served:

Cleanroom assembly and kitting
Packaging: development, validation, testing
Sterilization validation
Cleaning and decontamination
Diagnostics consumables manufacturing

In the publisher served categories the scoring, the rotation slot and the featured slot do not run at all. There is nothing to compete for, because the request does not go to a batch.

A request can select up to three categories, and a mixed selection splits. If a request selects a publisher served category and a category that is not, the publisher served part goes to Life Science Outsourcing alone and the rest goes to matched members in the ordinary way. The whole request still reaches no more than five suppliers, the publisher counted among them. The alternative, where any publisher served tick sent the whole request to the publisher, was considered and not taken: a rule under which the publisher gains from a buyer’s ambiguity reads badly when explained, and this page exists to be the explanation.

Competitors may still list in the publisher served categories, be verified in them, and carry the badge in them. Buyers find them and contact them directly, with no toll booth in between, which is a rule that applies to every listing on this site. What they do not receive is a routed request in those categories.

In every other category Life Science Outsourcing is an ordinary member. The same routing rules, the same verification, the same labels, and no special position of any kind.

What the publisher can and cannot see

There are two kinds of account, member and administrative. A member account sees its own routed cards and its own profile, and nothing else.
Life Science Outsourcing’s people hold ordinary member accounts scoped to Life Science Outsourcing, and through those accounts see the cards routed to Life Science Outsourcing and nothing more. Claiming is open to every company on this site. Life Science Outsourcing claimed its own page on 07 SEP 2026, with a claim link sent by an operator rather than one requested through the claim form.
Routing is a deterministic formula, not hand ranking. The only human control is an override on a single routing decision, and an override can only stop a card from counting. It cannot recall a card that was sent and it cannot add a recipient.
Every routing decision and every override is recorded in a permanent log, from the first request onward.
Administrative access is split into scoped roles, and every administrative read of a request is logged with the account that made it. The request queue and the verification queue need different roles, and a screen refuses an account that does not hold its role. Accounts and roles are administered by a further, separate role, and no account can grant itself a role, including that one.
Scores and response figures about a member are never shown to any other member as a number, a rank or a grade, and that includes Life Science Outsourcing’s member accounts. They are not published anywhere on this site in any form. The administrative roles see more, and the box below says who holds them. The desk role sees routed cards, whether and when each was answered and any reason given for passing, which is what a routing override is decided on. It also sees the contribution score each featured award was made on, which is the only score any administrative screen shows.

The boundary, as it isThe queues are scoped: the request queue and the verification queue need different roles, and account administration is a third, separate role that opens no queue. One person can hold both queue roles, and the person who administers accounts can grant any role, so this page does not say that no one person can reach both; it says that whoever does holds the roles visibly, in a list somebody can read. Every administrative role here is held by Life Science Outsourcing staff, including the one that reads the request queue. A page that states its own limit is worth more than one that overclaims and gets checked.

Same rails

Nobody pays to receive a request. Routing is never gated by payment, at any price, by anyone, including the publisher.
Merit is not for sale. The featured slot and the contribution ordering cannot be bought.
Verification is not for sale. The same six item Services checklist applies to the publisher as to everyone else. It is published in full on vetting.
Listing is free. Free, permanent and unlimited. You are not asked to fund a competitor in order to be visible. Claiming a page, membership and verification carry no fee either, and if that changes, this page changes first and the version moves.
Sponsored is always labeled. A sponsored piece carries a visible label, and its outbound links are marked as sponsored in the markup. When Life Science Outsourcing sponsors, it pays the same rates as any other sponsor, is invoiced through the same process and is labeled exactly the same way.

Competitors of Life Science Outsourcing may sponsor here. A competitor may buy any placement the publisher can buy, on the same terms as anyone else. Being a competitor of the publisher changes nothing about what a company may buy, what it pays or how it is labeled.

A category sponsorship is exclusive for its dated period, and for nothing wider. One sponsor holds a directory category at a time, and this site refuses a second placement in that category for any day the first one runs. The exclusivity reaches that one category and those dates. It does not reach another category, the newsletter or sponsored content, and no editorial month is exclusive to any sponsor. It is exclusive visibility and never exclusive access: every company listed in the category stays listed, the earned featured slot stays beside the sponsor, and requests in the category route exactly as they would with no sponsor.

What happens to your request

The desk is private. A request is never listed publicly. It goes to up to five matched members and to nobody else: fewer where fewer are eligible in your category, and never more than five, which is the number on the consent line you tick. In a publisher served category it goes to the publisher alone, and a mixed selection splits as described above.
Nothing is shared until you consent. The consent is an explicit control on the form. Contact details move only after you confirm an introduction, one member at a time.
A member has two business days to answer. The window runs in business days, weekends and US federal holidays excluded, and closes at 5:00 PM Eastern. It starts when the card is sent, and a card sent after that close or on a non-business day starts on the next business day. A card not answered by the close expires, and an expired card counts against that member’s place in the routing order. No member’s response record is published, here or anywhere else on this site.
Anonymity covers the whole card. If you choose it, identifying details are masked everywhere on the card until you accept an introduction: no company name, no brand name, no K numbers, and nothing that identifies your current suppliers. On an anonymous request we add no context block at all rather than a blurred one.
No file uploads, ever. The form takes no attachments. Specifications and drawings change hands after an introduction, under your own agreements, and the platform never holds them.
Context comes only from public FDA data we already hold. Three facts about your company, each linked to the FDA record behind it: active device listings, clearance count and enforcement history. Where your company cannot be keyed exactly to an FDA registrant, the block is left off rather than guessed. We do not buy firmographic data and we do not attach it to your request.
A request is kept for ninety days. If you never open the confirmation link, the whole request is deleted when the link expires after seven days. If you do, it is kept for ninety days from the day you sent it, and longer only while a supplier’s answer or your own decision on an introduction is still open. Then your name, contact details, company, location and everything you wrote in free text are removed, and the anonymised shape of the request is kept: the categories, the bands you picked, the regulatory answers and the dates. That shape cannot identify you, and privacy lists it field by field. You can ask us to remove a request sooner through the contact page.
A request with no match waits, and you are told so. Where no verified member matches your category, the request goes to nobody and waits inside that same ninety days.

Claiming the narrow versionNo files and no drawings is true and it is worth saying. It does not mean the platform holds nothing sensitive. What you type in the description, along with project stage, volumes, timeline and device class, is held by the platform and shown to matched members. We would rather say that than let the no uploads rule be read as a custody claim it does not support.

Where you hear from us, and where you do notTwo messages reach you from the desk itself: the one that says a supplier is interested in your request, and the one that says nobody could be matched, sent when that becomes true rather than guessed at in advance. A request that went out and drew no interest ends quietly: if every supplier passes, or none answers inside the time they are given, nothing here writes to tell you so. Nothing writes to you when the ninety days end either, and a request waiting on the anonymity read or on a check of its contents waits without a message. Where a request goes out in one of its categories and nobody could be matched in another, nothing writes to tell you about the second. The request is anonymised on the ninetieth day as described above, whether or not you heard from us in between. You can ask where a request stands at any time through the contact page.

What a member may do with your request

A member may use a routed card only to answer that request. A member that passes may not keep a copy of the card or of anything in it; the card still shows in its own account here, which is this site’s record of it and not a copy the member holds. No member may use a card, or anything in it, for prospecting. Breaking this rule is grounds for removing the member from the network. The rule is in the member terms, alongside the rule that a card is never forwarded, published or shared.

How routing order is decided

Outside the publisher served categories, the order in which members receive a request comes from two things: the quality of the requests a member has passed into the network, and how quickly they respond to what they are sent, measured over a rolling window. One seat in every batch is reserved for a member outside the top of that order, so the list cannot freeze. New members enter at their category’s median rather than at the bottom.

The weights are not published. We would rather say that plainly than imply more transparency than we offer. What is published is the inputs and their direction, which is what you need in order to decide whether the rules are ones you want to operate under.

Scores are never published and are never shown to any member as a number. The only public expression of them is the order things appear in.

What verified means

The checks behind the badge, per wing, and everything the badge does not cover, are published in full on vetting. That page is the single source.

How to hold us to this

Every badge resolves to the member’s public profile, where the checks and their dates are visible. You do not have to take a badge on someone’s website at face value.
We do not lapse, suspend or revoke a member’s verification without notice. The member’s quality contact is sent a notice by email that shows the record relied on, and the change cannot take effect until fourteen days after that notice is sent. A notice that was not sent cannot be acted on, and a response inside the fourteen days is recorded against the notice. The one exception is the member’s own decision: a member that releases its own page ends its verification with it, at once and without notice. The statuses and the notice are set out on vetting.
Every sponsored unit is labeled, on the page and in the markup, so it is checkable by a reader and by a parser.
A change to this page is dated and the version number moves. Nothing here changes silently.
To raise a complaint about any of it, write to [email protected], or by post at the address on the contact page. A message to that address is forwarded to the publisher, Life Science Outsourcing, and read by a person there.