Touchy Feely Devices

Yesterday, a Toronto-based technology firm called Quanser unveiled prototypes of devices that incorporate haptic, or feeling feedback, technology for medical applications. Quanser expects the devices will be used, among other things, for stroke-victim upper body rehabilitation and physician training. A...

Scivanta Closes Book on Litigation

Scivanta Medical Corporation this week saw the end of years-long litigation over exclusive rights to distribute Syntest, a hormone replacement therapy drug. The Spring Lake, NJ, firm received a final payment of $2.5 million from Syntho Group related to the settlement agreement entered into by Scivanta,...

Coapt Systems Completes $22.6 Million Series E Financing

Coapt Systems, a Palo Alto, CA, firm that develops bioabsorbable implants for aesthetic surgery, completed a $22.6 million Series E round of financing. The seven-year old company sells a range of implantable soft tissue fixation devices for use in facial plastic surgery. Its pipeline includes...

Slow Japanese Regulatory Process Affects U.S. Firms

According to a new report by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), slow approval times for medical devices in Japan could negatively affect U.S. firms. And according to the report, Medical Devices and Equipment: Competitive Conditions Affecting U.S. Trade in Japan and Other Principal Foreign...

‘Ones to Watch’: Kyphon and Allergan

In its latest issue, National Review of Medicine, a publication aimed at Canadian physicians, cites Kyphon and Allergan as companies to watch in the medical device field. Kyphon specializes in restoring spine function and has a device for relieving pressure on the spine. Allergan’s better known as a...

Canadian Firm Gets Green Light to Sell in U.S.

Medical Ventures, of British Columbia, got 510(k) clearance this week to start selling its PeriPatch Aegis system in the U.S. PeriPatch Aegis is used to reinforce surgical staple lines during procedures such as bariatric and thoracic surgery. The company says it will begin limited marketing of the product...

New ViOptix Chief Formerly of Now-Defunct Curon

ViOptix announced yesterday that Larry C. Heaton II has joined the company as president, CEO and chairman. Heaton’s been looking for work since November 2006, when Curon Medical, where he was CEO, went bankrupt. Before Curon, Heaton was in charge at Response Genetics, an applied genomics start-up...

’70s Flashback?

Efforts to reduce healthcare costs often emphasize the demand side of the economic equation, focusing on areas such as tort reform and consumer-directed healthcare as ways to wring greater efficiencies from the marketplace. But according to Lawton Robert Burns, a professor of healthcare systems at Wharton,...