As global life sciences investment slows, CINDE managing director Marianela Urgellés says Costa Rica is moving up the medical technology chain into AI-led healthcare, R&D and advanced manufacturing

Costa Rica is positioning itself as a next-generation life sciences hub as global medical technology companies rethink supply chains, artificial intelligence and manufacturing resilience.

Speaking ahead of tomorrow’s Life Sciences Forum 2026, Marianela Urgellés, managing director of CINDE, the private non-profit organisation that promotes foreign investment into Costa Rica, said the country was moving beyond manufacturing excellence into research and development, advanced engineering, AI-driven healthcare and higher-value operations.

“The Life Sciences Forum is where the global industry meets our ecosystem face to face,” Urgellés exclusively told The European. “It is where we set direction for what comes next – the shift from manufacturing excellence into R&D, design and AI-driven healthcare.”

Costa Rica now exports more than US$10 billion in medical devices – nearly half of its total goods exports – and is the world’s largest per capita exporter of medical devices, she said.

More than 100 multinational life sciences companies operate in the country, including 18 of the world’s top 35 medtech firms.

“Costa Rica is not simply keeping pace with this industry,” Urgellés said. “We’re helping shape where it goes.”

When the first Life Sciences Forum was launched in 2013, Costa Rica had around 70 medtech companies and medical device exports of roughly US$2 billion. Today, Urgellés said, the country had moved from proving it could deliver quality at scale into a new phase focused on what comes next.

“This year, the question is not can Costa Rica do this,” she said. “The question is what comes next?”

Speakers include Mohammad Behnam, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, and Elia Lima-Walton, a physician executive and principal product manager for healthcare generative AI at Mayo Clinic, with sessions focused on the intersection of healthcare and technology.

Urgellés said Costa Rica’s position had become more significant as global medtech foreign direct investment projects fell by about 25 per cent and U.S outbound investment hit its lowest level in a decade.

Despite that wider slowdown, she said, Costa Rica continued to attract investment and reinvestment.

In 2025, CINDE supported 48 reinvestment projects compared with 19 new investment projects, a pattern Urgellés said showed that companies entering Costa Rica were expanding into higher-value work rather than leaving.

“What stands out most is the level of commitment we are seeing from companies already here,” she told us. “Companies that come to Costa Rica do not leave. They expand.”

The country now exports 164 different types of medical devices to more than 88 markets and employs more than 60,000 people across 16 subsectors.

Its medical device industry has also moved from basic disposables into class II and class III devices, including cardiovascular, neurovascular, orthopaedic and diagnostic systems.

Urgellés said Costa Rica’s strengths included three decades of manufacturing under FDA and EC standards, free trade agreements with more than 50 countries, political stability, rule of law, a young bilingual workforce and a time zone that allows companies to work in real time with North America and Europe.

European companies from Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Sweden and Spain were already operating in Costa Rica, she added.

“They came, they tested the ecosystem, and they stayed and expanded,” she said. “That track record more than any report is the strongest endorsement we could ask for.”

The Forum will also explore supply chain resilience after the pandemic exposed weaknesses in global medical device production networks.

Urgellés said companies were no longer looking only for cost savings but for stability, regulatory alignment, proximity and access to core markets.

AI will be another central theme, with sessions examining generative AI in healthcare, drug discovery, diagnostic imaging and clinical trials.

Urgellés said Costa Rica’s digital infrastructure and talent base meant the country was well placed to seize that opportunity.

Looking ahead, she said Costa Rica’s next phase would be built on applied research and development, AI in healthcare, biotechnology, microelectronics and globally competitive university talent.

The global medtech market is projected to exceed $800 billion by the mid-2030s, growing at nearly seven per cent a year.

“The question for Costa Rica is not whether we will be part of that growth,” Urgellés said. “We will. The real question is what kind of role we will play.”

Watch the full interview with Marianela Urgellés, managing director of CINDE, ahead of the Life Sciences Forum 2026 on The European’s YouTube channel.

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