5/27/2010 BOTHELL, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SonoSite, Inc., the world leader and specialist in bedside and point-of-care ultrasound, today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire privately held Visualsonics, a Toronto-based company focused on ultra high-frequency micro-ultrasound technology. The aggregate transaction value will be approximately $71 million net of cash and debt. Visualsonics is the technology [...]

Monday, May 24, 2010 PHOENIX — Mayo Clinic Hospital in northeast Phoenix made history on May 3, 2010, when it became the first hospital in the U.S. to discharge a patient with an artificial heart — after he had been hospitalized for more than two years. But to call him a “man without a heart” [...]

NORTH HAVEN, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Covidien (NYSE: COV – News), a leading global provider of healthcare products, today announced the worldwide launch of the SILS™ Stitch articulating suturing device for advanced laparoscopic surgery, including SILS single-incision procedures. The SILS Stitch instrument expands the Company’s SILS product line, as well as its endoscopic suturing portfolio, which includes today’s [...]

PLYMOUTH, Minn., May 18, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ev3 Inc., a global endovascular device company, today announced that it has filed the final module of its Premarket Approval (PMA) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the Pipeline(TM) Embolization Device. This final module, containing a comprehensive review of the clinical data, completes [...]

“The AARP says that manufacturer prices for brand-name prescription drugs commonly used by people on Medicare rose 9.7% for the year ending in March – the biggest annual jump since the group started tracking prices in 2002,” The Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports. “The price of specialty drugs like biologics and injectables rose 9.2%. [...]

The Wall Street Journal: “Hospitals lack leverage when negotiating prices for high-cost implants like defibrillators and replacement hips because individual doctors, rather than hospitals, typically select the products they use in their patients. Since these doctors often aren’t hospital employees, they have little incentive to bargain-hunt. New health rules, however, call for more testing of [...]

Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) is introducing the fully-integrated ProBeam™ proton therapy system at the 2010 Particle Therapy Co-operative Group (PT-COG) meeting here this week. The ProBeam system incorporates imaging, gating, robotic patient positioning, treatment planning and oncology information software to enhance treatment quality for patients and workflow efficiency for clinicians. “ProBeam is the result [...]

FAIRFIELD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–GE Healthcare, the healthcare business of GE (NYSE:GE – News) and CardioDx, a pioneer in cardiovascular genomic diagnostics, announced today that the companies have entered into a strategic alliance to advance and co-develop diagnostic technologies to improve the care and management of patients with cardiovascular disease. Building on the alliance, the GE Healthymagination [...]

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to St. Jude Medical Inc. (NYSE: STJ) that cites the device maker for improperly promoting a cardiac ablation catheter system. St. Jude on its website promoted its Epicor cardiac ablation catheter system for use in treating atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat that can result in [...]