The Medtronic-Covidien merger is set to proceed, despite recent federal regulation from the U.S. Treasury designed to deter tax inversion deals. Instead of using cash for the deal, however, Medtronic will use debt to finance the acquisition.  Continue Reading..

Portable NIR spectrometers enable innovative and more efficient ways of handling countless applications. I recently spoke with Mariquita Gordon, business manager of DLP embedded products at Texas Instruments, to discuss the company’s new NIR technologies and talk about the emerging market for portable NIR spectrometers.    Continue Reading..

Photonics West serves as the perennial indicator of market trends for the photonics and optics industries. At this year’s event, held last month in San Francisco, one of the pervasive themes I observed in both the technical conference and the exhibition was the increasing role photonics and optics are playing in the development of advanced biomedical technologies. That trend is poised to continue well into the future.   Continue Reading..

Recently, a group of researchers at Harvard University developed an innovative, anatomically designed device that could help rehabilitate patients suffering from ankle and foot disorders. Unlike traditional exoskeletons, which are rigid and restrict full range-of-motion, this prototype incorporates a unique combination of soft materials, sensors, pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs), and control software to provide support and allow for natural...  Continue Reading..

A recent survey found that a staggering percentage of surgeons are unaware of the costs of the implantable medical devices (IMDs) they use. There are two key factors that contribute to these surprising statistics. The first factor is that surgeons are not required, or incentivized, to know the cost of a device. Second, hospitals sign confidentiality clauses with their vendors, and those agreements hide the costs of devices—even to...  Continue Reading..