ML10

NICE, the healthcare guidance body, has today issued guidance supporting the use of Covidien’s Pipeline® device for the treatment of complex brain aneurysms.

When a pioneering surgeon is sat on the same table as an advocate of evidence-based medicine and greater regulatory controls, it’s easy enough to predict that their views might not align perfectly. So it was with the holding of a UK Parliamentary Select committee on medical devices regulation, held last Wednesday.

The UK Commons select committee on science and technology is meeting tomorrow (Wednesday 23rd May) to explore how to ensure the safety of medical implants before they enter the market, and how best to collect clinical data once an implant is in use, from the perspective of clinicians, patients and scientists.

Merit Medical Systems will be recruiting up to 200 staff over the next five years at its newly opened €20M Galway facility, already an employer of 379. The aim is to make the facility the company’s centre of excellence for new product and technology development.

AANA is probably the world’s best known annual forum for all things arthroscopy. It’s being held right now in Orlando and the program looks like the usual excellent selection of guest speakers and papers.

One benefit of being a commentator on the medtech industry is that we get faced with masses of information to distil into something meaningful. Just occasionally it’s nice to have a time-out and ruminate on what we’re seeing happening and how that might pan out.

Hospitals and purchasers have woken up to the threat that medical device companies will find ways to dump the burden of the 2.3% tax levy on them. So they’re lobbying the taxman to make sure there are no loopholes through which companies can jump to deduct the tax from income while also passing on the costs to the customer.

Humanitarian disasters usually bring out the best in people and the good folks who everyday tell us they work in the medical device business in order to help patients have another opportunity to do so by supporting an initiative by medical device translation company Crimson Life Sciences with medical equipment to help people suffering in Syria.

Following last week’s coverage of Joe Hage’s no2point3 campaign, John Eckberg, Cook Medical’s Director of Media Relations has provided us with his own (and presumably Cook’s) view of the matter. It’s no surprise, given Cook’s previous well-expressed vehement antipathy towards the bill, to find the company broadly supportive of the campaign to repeal the act, specifically the medical device company tax levy.

Whichever side of the argument you come down on, you’ll have noticed the 2.3% device tax debate and will no doubt have a view. We explain why we’re giving the campaign air time.

More coverage of the barmy Eurocrats’ recommendations for new EU medical device legislation. There’s nothing like a good scandal to get politicians chasing votes, and imposing draconian new rules might create more problems than the one they’re designed to address.

Covidien and GE Healthcare will both benefit from their newly formalised alliance, which looks like another example of a device market which is employing what we could call pragmatic synergies to future proof itself.

Echo Therapeutics is trumpeting clinical results from its transdermal glucose monitoring system which has been performed at Tufts Medical Center, Boston Mass. The study concerns use in an intensive care setting and the investigating clinicians seem impressed.

US regulatory agency the FDA issues very public warning letters to companies which are then trotted out around the media so we can all revel in the organisations pain. But would this level of openness be well received in Europe where medical device regulations seem to be in the media’s crosshairs too frequently for the industry’s own good.

They’re all at it… joining forces to extend sales of their own products while also sharing future NPD expenditure is medtech’s very own definition of a developing symbiotic relationship between closely related businesses.

Accuray takes on da-Vinci in the quest to establish the gold standard of treatment for early stage localised prostate cancer. Ten year multicentre study announced.