Baxter (NYSE:BAX) shares have risen today after the medical device company topped expectations on Wall Street with its 1st quarter earnings results. The Deerfield, Ill.-based company posted profits of $272 million, or 50¢ per share, on sales of $2.48 billion for the 3 months ended March 31. The company saw its bottom line shrink 92% while […]
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23andMe is back: FDA allows marketing of genetic health risk tests
FDA this month allowed genetic testing company 23andMe to market genetic health risk tests for 10 diseases and conditions including Parkinson’s disease and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The de novo premarket review authorization, announced April 6, also included celiac disease, which results in the inability to digest gluten; alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which raises the risk of […]
Brexit effects on Authorized Representatives in EU and UK
By Ronald Boumans, Emergo Group On 29 March 2017, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the European Union delivered a formal letter invoking Article 50 of the Treaty of the EU to the President of the European Council. This means the UK will leave the European Union in two years at the latest. The date of […]
Verily launches biosensor-equipped Study Watch for clinical study patient monitoring
Verily Life Sciences, the medical arm of Google parent Alphabet (NSDQ:GOOGL), today unveiled its Study Watch, a wearable device designed to passively capture health data. The watch, intended to create a method of unobtrusive biosensing, is equipped with multiple sensors, including an electrocardiogram, and can monitor heart rate, electrodermal activity and inertial movements, with a battery life of up […]
How Boston Sci is getting drug-eluting stents and balloons into legs
Boston Scientific officials think they have a leg up when it comes to bringing drug-eluting technology to bear on peripheral artery disease. That’s because the medical device giant has decades of experience with balloons and drug-eluting stents used around the heart. When it comes to treating the narrowing arteries in the legs and thighs, Boston […]
How artificial life spawned a billion-dollar industry
(Reuters) – Scientists are getting closer to building life from scratch and technology pioneers are taking notice, with record sums moving into a field that could deliver novel drugs, materials, chemicals and even perfumes. Despite ethical and safety concerns, investors are attracted by synthetic biology’s wide market potential and the plummeting cost of DNA synthesis, […]
Medtech stories we missed this week: March 31, 2017
This week we saw a few FDA 510(k) clearances and one of the 1st uses of a next-generation surgical robot in Asia. Here are medtech stories we missed this week but thought were still worth mentioning: 1. Corindus touts first Asian use of next-generation robot Corindus Vascular Robotics announced in a March 31 press release that robot-assisted […]
Short of votes, Trumpcare bill is withdrawn
Republican leaders in the US House of Representatives today withdrew the GOP-backed Trumpcare bill, which aimed to begin dismantling and replacing Obamacare, due to a shortage of votes. A vote on the measure was planned after Trump cut off negotiations with Republicans who had balked at the plan and issued an ultimatum to vote on […]
The top medtech stories of early 2017
The new Trump administration and Republican Congress – and all the accompanying change and uncertainty – is the major story for the medical device industry. But there are many other medtech stories worth noting from the first quarter of 2017. There was an FDA warning over Abbott’s Absorb bioresorbable stent, a continued spate of M&A deals, diabetes […]
Do patient advocacy organizations have a conflict of interest?
At least 83% of U.S. patient advocacy organizations receive financial support from medical device, drug and biotechnology companies, according to new research out of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. The Penn research team – which included Matthew McCoy, Harald Schmidt and Ezekiel Emanuel – examined websites and annual reports for 104 organizations […]
