Features

Sunshine Heart's David Rosa: "Patients don't like being tethered to a device"

April 30, 2012 by Arezu Sarvestani

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"In the U.S., for Class III heart failure there are about 1.5 million patients," Sunshine Heart CEO David Rosa told MassDevice.com in an exclusive podcast interview. "That's about 7 times the Class IV market, which is traditionally where LVADs participate."

Intuitive Surgical's Guthart: "The first rule of being disruptive is having people who believe they can change the world"

March 28, 2012 by Brian Johnson

Gary Guthart knows a little something about disruptive innovation.

Accuray CEO Euan Thomson: "We've never paid much attention to the opinions or messages of our competitors"

March 5, 2012 by Arezu Sarvestani

When Euan Thomson landed in the corner office at radiosurgery device maker Accuray (NSDQ:ARAY) in 2002, the company was just preparing to penetrate a very well-established market.

MassDevice Q&A: LayerWise co-founder Peter Mercelis

February 21, 2012 by Arezu Sarvestani

LayerWise made headlines this month when it unveiled the world's first custom-made total lower jaw implant, "printed" from a 3D schematic.

The device was constructed layer by layer from a digital file mapped to the patient's jaw, a process called "metal additive manufacturing" that Belgium-based LayerWise has used in making custom spinal implants, cranial plates and acetabular implants.

MassDevice Podcast: Soteira CEO Larry Jasinski

February 7, 2012 by Arezu Sarvestani

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Soteira CEO Larry Jasinski is no stranger to adversity.

MassDevice Q&A: James Mazzo, Abbott Medical Optics

December 26, 2011 by Brian Johnson

You don't get more dialed-in to the device industry than James Mazzo, and you definitely don't get busier.

In addition to his duties as senior VP of Abbott Medical Optics Inc., an ophthalmic company he spun out of Allergan (NYSE:AGN) and then sold to health care giant Abbott (NYSE:ABT) in 2009, Mazzo has been the chairman of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, or AdvaMed, for the past two years.

MassDevice Podcast: Tackling paralysis with Alfred Mann Foundation CEO David Hankin

December 14, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

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David Hankin became CEO at health research institute The Alfred Mann Foundation in a rather roundabout way.

MassDevice Q&A: Sanovas CEO Larry Gerrans

November 21, 2011 by Brad Perriello

The numbers on pulmonary disease in the U.S are staggering – more than 203,000 people were diagnosed in 2007 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which lists nearly 160,000 lung cancer deaths for that year.

Add in other pulmonary afflictions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (126,000 deaths in 2005, according to the CDC) and the numbers pass from staggering to mind-boggling.

MassDevice Podcast: Capsule Tech's Stuart Long talks connectivity, innovation and momentum

October 31, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

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When Stuart Long accepted the keys to the corner office at Capsule Tech. North America earlier this month, he walked into a period of skyrocketing growth for the medical device connectivity company.

MassDevice Podcast: AccuVein CEO Ron Goldman

October 12, 2011 by MassDevice staff

Venipuncture – drawing blood or establishing an intravenous feed – is the most common invasive medical procedure. For many patients, it's a painful exercise in frustration when clinicians struggle to find a blood vessel, sometimes requiring multiple needle sticks.

AccuVein and CEO Ron Goldman aim to change all that with the company's AV300 vascular illumination device. The wireless, handheld module uses a pair of lasers to paint a patient's arm with light, making otherwise invisible or hard-to-find blood vessels apparent to the naked eye.

MassDevice Podcast: Mela Sciences' CEO on the MelaFind odyssey

October 3, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

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Patent reform and med-tech: The America Invents Act promises to be a game-changer

September 19, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

This week President Barack Obama is expected to sign a patent reform bill marking the most dramatic changes to the patent system in decades, drawing adulation and ire from varying sectors of the innovation economy.

The American Invents Act, six years in the making, contains several sweeping changes, but the main bone of contention is a transformation of the U.S. patent system from a first-to-invent application process to a first-to-file process.

MassDevice Podcast: Neuronetics CEO Bruce Shook

August 27, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

Neuronetics' NeuroStar TMS therapy system

Neuronetics Inc. is paving the way for a new type of depression therapy, a non-invasive electromagnetic field treatment designed to stimulate brain cells linked to depression.

Bruce Shook, co-founder, president & CEO, talked to MassDevice about pioneering the market for the only FDA-cleared transcranial magnetic stimulation system to date, his company's NeuroStar TMS system.

The therapy, which won the FDA nod in 2008, is a rarity in the med-tech world: A device-based approach to a psychiatric disorder.

MassDevice Exclusive: Former CEO Hawkins on leaving Medtronic

August 17, 2011 by MassDevice staff

Bill Hawkins

They gave him a sword and he handed them the world.

When William Hawkins officially flipped the keys to Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) over to successor Omar Ishrak, he offered a simple message and a gift. The message was clear – don't lose sight of founder Earl Bakken's mission to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life while "striving without reserve for the greatest possible reliability and quality."

Cancer: Allegro Diagnostics hunts lung cancer's "canary in the coal mine"

August 15, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

Dr. Avrum Spira in the clinic

If Allegro Diagnostics' clinical trials go as planned, the Maynard, Mass.-based company will be on its way to commercializing a test to detect the "canary in the coal mine" of the planet's deadliest cancer: Early-stage lung cancer.

With a patented molecular diagnostic assay, Allegro co-founder and Boston University associate professor Avrum Spira has garnered over $3.5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health and $8.9 million from investors.

Putting some brains behind the software

July 25, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

If Nuance Communications (NSDQ:NUAN) had its way, medical transcription would be a two-way conversation between man and machine.

The company is looking to transform the transcription process into a back-and-forth between the physician and an intelligent software program that prompts for details and suggests potential courses of treatment based on a more holistic view of the patient story.

MassDevice Q&A: Delcath CEO Eamonn Hobbs

June 30, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

Delcath Systems Inc. (NSDQ:DCTH) CEO Eamonn Hobbs is in a good mood these days.

Hack this: Researchers develop device to shield pacemakers

June 15, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

Wireless devices have changed the way health information moves, making data more abundant and more accessible. But it's also made medical devices more vulnerable.

Researchers at MIT and the University of Mass. Amherst are the first to develop a technology that could protect the millions of existing medical device implants without altering or replacing them.

Wireless technologies made their mark on medical devices in a big way, attaching themselves to everything from pacemakers and defibrillators to insulin pumps and nerve stimulators.

Draper's tiny bio-MEM tech goes from a head-scratcher to a no-brainer

June 8, 2011 by Arezu Sarvestani

A bio-MEM drug delivery device developed by Draper Labs

Draper was into bio-MEMs before they were cool.

Micro-electro-mechanical systems, also known as MEMs, are tiny electrical machines that are common in consumer electronics and automotive sensors. Their presence in medical technology, however, is a much newer phenomenon.

In the last 10 years, as bio-MEMs technology has gone from being a head-scratcher to being a no-brainer, Jeffrey Borenstein has had a front-row seat.

MassDevice Q&A: Medtronic CFO Gary Ellis

May 26, 2011 by Brian Johnson

The waters around the good ship Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) have been a bit frothy these days.

The world's largest pure-play medical device maker has had a busy 2011: The Fridley, Minn.-based company announced a new CEO (Omar Ishrak) to replace the retiring William Hawkins, spiked a $2 billion contract with one of the largest group purchasing organizations in the hospital industry and is one of three combatants in a battle royale over market share in the suddenly chilly cardiac rhythm management market.

Orthopedic survey: Stryker, Zimmer the most innovative companies in hips and knees

April 27, 2011 by MassDevice staff

Stryker Corp. (NYSE:SYK) and Zimmer Holdings Inc. (NYSE:ZHM) are the most innovative companies in the intensely competitive hip and knee markets, according to a new survey of orthopedic surgeons.

MassDevice podcast: BG Medicine CEO Dr. Pieter Muntendam

March 24, 2011 by Brad Perriello

When BG Medicine (NSDQ:BGMD) took itself public last month, three years after first announcing (then scuttling) its first initial public offering, investors seemed to like what they saw. Sure, the company cut its share price in half just ahead of the $7-per-share offering Feb. 11, but shares have averaged nearly $8.41 since then — a 20.1 percent increase.*

MassDevice Podcast: Nano Surfaces CEO Joe Gatto

February 25, 2011 by Brad Perriello

Coming generations of implanted medical devices will interact with the human body at the molecular level, using sophisticated nano-coatings to not only thwart microbial growth but to perform biological operations.

That's the prediction of Nano Surfaces founder, president and CEO Joe Gatto. The Boston-based firm is developing technology it's licensed from Cornell University to create self-assembling, anti-microbial coatings on a nanotech scale — and Gatto says that's just the beginning. To prove it, he's hitting to road to raise a Series A round from institutional investors.

Mining the innovation gap

January 31, 2011 by Brian Johnson

There's a lot of loot sitting on the med-tech sidelines these days. According to research by MassDevice.com, the top five medical device companies are sitting on a combined $17 billion in free cash.

With all that money to burn, you'd think that the med-tech mergers & acquisitions market would be a busy place. But aside from a few blockbuster deals and some lower-value transactions, medical device M&A activity is in a slump.

But there are also a slew of med-tech start-ups slavering for a taste of all that cash, hoping to land a corporate sponsor who will shepherd them through the development phase and buy the technology outright once it (presumably) proves out.

MassDevice Podcast: Avedro Inc. CEO David Muller

December 22, 2010 by Brian Johnson

More than 20 years ago, David Muller led a revolution in the world of vision correction.

As chairman and CEO of Summit Technology, he led a team that brought the first excimer laser through the Food & Drug Administration for use in reshaping the cornea. The technology, later dubbed Lasik, is a worldwide phenomenon and has helped tens of millions of patients shed glasses and contact lenses.

Decades later, Muller is at it again as the chief executive of Waltham, Mass.-based Avedro Inc., looking to finish what he started, this time with a new vision correction procedure he says will make Lasik safer and more effective.

MassDevice Podcast: GE Healthcare's Earl Jones

November 22, 2010 by Christian Holland

The term "liberated information" may sound like it was taken from a science fiction novel, but to General Electric's (NYSE:GE) Earl Jones, it's a means to improve access and quality to healthcare while at the same time making it cheaper. Jones is the vice president and general manager of the eHealth division of GE Healthcare, overseeing the development of information technology platforms that customers ranging from small doctors' offices to state governments are implementing into their everyday operations.

MassDevice Podcast: Medtronic CEO William Hawkins

November 2, 2010 by Brian Johnson

For William Hawkins, Medtronic Inc. (NYSE:MDT) runs in the family.

Inside his corner office at the Fridley, Minn.-based medical device goliath, Hawkins, chairman and CEO of one of the world's largest medical device companies, keeps a picture of two customers he says not only shaped how he sees his company but how he sees the world.

FDA user fees: Industry pushes for better guidance

September 21, 2010 by Ingrid Mezo

The Food & Drug Administration's user fee program collects payments from medical device makers when they submit their devices for review by the federal watchdog agency. Yesterday, MassDevice took a look at competing claims from the medical device industry, the FDA and other stakeholders over the effectiveness of the program. Today we look deeper into whether the program is adequately meeting its own goals.

Another commitment the FDA made in exchange for receiving user fees from industry was to expedite its production of guidance documents to provide industry with a "roadmap" of how to bring a product from development to clearance for sale.

Industry troubled by performance trends in FDA user fee program

September 20, 2010 by Ingrid Mezo

It takes 20 percent longer to obtain a final decision on a 510(k) submission than it did in 2002, despite the millions the Food & Drug Administration has collected from medical device makers in so-called "user fees," according to AdvaMed's Janet Trunzo.

Trunzo, AdvaMed's executive vice president for technology and regulatory affairs, was one of several industry association speakers who expressed disappointment in the medical device user fee program at a Sept. 14 workshop held to gain stakeholder input on the program.

"Our companies are concerned that the link between performance and fees has broken down," said Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance executive director David Fisher.

MassDevice Q&A: Accuray president and CEO Euan Thomson

August 16, 2010 by Brad Perriello

Accuray Inc. (NSDQ:ARAY) has a tough row to hoe: Cultivate a market that crosses medical specialty lines for a product that costs millions. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's CyberKnife system is a pioneering device in radiosurgery, using precisely targeted, massive doses of X-ray radiation to non-invasively destroy tumors.

MassDevice Q&A: Abiomed CEO Michael Minogue

July 9, 2010 by Christian Holland

Abiomed Inc. (NSDQ:ABMD) makes cardiac assist devices powerful enough to pump more than a gallon of blood through the heart each minute and small enough to be placed inside the heart via catheter. It's a highly specialized, highly competitive market that's difficult to break into.

At an investors meeting in Boston last week, the company sought to deliver the message that its devices offer a less invasive option than ventricular assist devices and don't need to be combined with inotropic drugs as is often the case with intra-aortic balloon pumps. It's been two years since Abiomed won 510(k) clearance from the Food & Drug Administration for its Impella 2.5 device; at the conference, CTO Dr. Thorsten Siess acknowledged that physicians have been slow to adopt the device.

MassDevice Q&A: John Abele, Part II

June 10, 2010 by Brad Perriello

Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX) co-founder John Abele told us about the origins of the medical device giant in the first installment of a lengthy chat with MassDevice, detailing its start in the basement of a famed Czech mystic's lab in a Catholic church rectory.

In the second installment, Abele touches on how he and co-founder Peter Nicholas engineered the Boston Scientific's launch, how his involvement with the Natick, Mass.-based company evolved over the years and how being a "cheap son of a bitch" helped drive creativity and innovation in the early days.

MassDevice Q&A: Practice Fusion founder and CEO Ryan Howard

June 9, 2010 by Christian Holland

To raise the seed money for Practice Fusion, founder Ryan Howard sold his house and car.

"I was really going all in," the 34-year-old CEO told MassDevice.

Howard might have made a smart bet. According to Practice Fusion, the company has the fastest-growing user base of any electronic medical record company in the country, at 40,000 members. Its offering is free for physicians, using a largely advertising-based business model.

MassDevice Q&A: Molecular Biometrics CEO Jim Posillico

May 3, 2010 by Brad Perriello

Jim Posillico has a long academic and commercial pedigree in reproductive medicine, having spent time as a researcher at Harvard Medical School, Serono Laboratories, the Ares-Serono Group, InterMune Life Sciences and SAGE BioPharma.

So when he learned of a metabolomics platform being developed at McGill University, he was quick to realize its applicability to a variety of potential conditions and disease states. The technology allows the comparison of biomarkers produced by cell metabolism monitor the progress of diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

MassDevice Q&A: GenomeQuest CEO Ron Ranauro

March 16, 2010 by Brad Perriello

Ron Ranauro spent the better part of two decades in the computer industry, watching as the personal computer and the Internet transformed the business. It's growing maturity coincided with early efforts to sequence the human genome, leading Ranauro in the late 1990s to apply his computing chops to the life science scene.

MassDevice spoke with Ranauro as GenomeQuest launched an application programming interface that allows developers to customize apps for their labs' research programs. We asked him about the API, what sets his venture apart from other sequencing data management firms (hint: it's in the clouds) and got his take on the ethical implications of widespread access to genome sequencing technology.

MassDevice Q&A: PatientKeeper CEO Paul Brient

February 4, 2010 by Brad Perriello

Paul Brient, the president and CEO of PatientKeeper Inc., has spent 20 years in the healthcare IT trenches, first with the physician practice management software start-up he founded and ran, BCS Inc. After stints at McKesson Corp. (NYSE:MCK), HPR Inc. and The Boston Consulting Group, he joined PatientKeeper in 2002.

MassDevice Q&A: CeQur CEO Jim Peterson

January 21, 2010 by Brad Perriello

Jim Peterson spent the better part of 20 years helping to improve the quality of the world's blood supply at Haemonetics Corp. (NYSE:HAE), where he was CEO from 1998 to 2003. And while he was passionate about the importance of that work, his new role as chief executive for CeQur Ltd. might be even closer to his heart.

Peterson spoke with MassDevice just before giving a presentation on the patch-like device CeQur is developing for insulin delivery at the OneMedPlace Finance Forum in San Francisco Jan. 13. He told us about the personal connection he feels to his current work, which stems from the fact that his daughter has diabetes, and why he sees Montreux, Switzerland-based CeQur's device as a potential market leader.

Researchers take on the FDA

January 7, 2010 by Brian Johnson

It's not often that a few doctors ensconced in the ivy towers of academia can get a lumbering dinosaur like the Food & Drug Administration to turn on a dime, let alone during the week between Christmas and the new year.

But that's exactly what University of California at San Francisco researchers Sanket S. Dhruva, Lisa Bero and Rita Redberg did after the Journal of the American Medical Assn. published their paper "Strength of Study Evidence Examined by the FDA in Premarket Approval of Cardiovascular Devices."

MassDevice Q&A: Serica Technologies CEO Greg Altman

December 28, 2009 by Brad Perriello

Thirteen years ago Greg Altman, president and CEO of Serica Technologies Inc., blew out his knee playing football. After reconstructive surgery on his ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, the former All-American at Tufts University found the rehabilitation process so challenging that he set out to develop an alternative.

MassDevice Q&A: Advertising executive Bruce Lehman

December 23, 2009 by Brian Johnson

Bruce Lehman's been in the advertising game since the late 1970s, but the principal at Lehman Millet, a Boston-based marketing and communications agency, has been focused on the medical device and diagnostics industry solely since the 1990s, making it a powerful player in the industry despite its relatively small size.

Today, Lehman Millet's client mix includes biotechnology, biomaterials and specialty pharmaceutical firms, along with its core medical device customers. MassDevice: spoke with Lehman, 59, about an ever-present question: "How, exactly, do you market a medical device?"

Winning the arms race: The centuries-old quest to build a better prosthetic

November 25, 2009 by Alan Siegel

JUNE 22, 2008 WAS A GORGEOUS EARLY SUMMER DAY, with partly cloudy skies and 80-degree temperatures.

Taking advantage of the weather, Greg Reynolds, a muscular 24-year-old veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, hopped on his yellow Suzuki TL1000R racing bike to spend the morning at Colt State Park in Bristol, R.I., a swath of land on Narragansett Bay some 17 miles south of his house in Dighton, Mass.

The TL1000R is not a motorcycle for the casual rider. Its 996C, 4-stroke engine is capable of 9,500 RPM — or zero to 60 miles per hour in about 3.6 seconds — giving the rider the feeling of being strapped onto the nose of a rocket.

The prosthetic fitting process

November 20, 2009 by Alan Siegel

Prosthetist Luke Richards' small office is tucked deep inside the Jamaica Plain branch of the VA Boston Healthcare System. One morning this spring, a patient's carbon fiber leg rests by his desk. A chrome briefcase, with a picture of Greg Reynolds' new arm on it, sits on the window sill.

Here, in the E Wing of the hospital, veterans are fitted for prosthetic devices. It doesn't end with arms, legs, hands and feet, either. For example, Reynolds is itching to get back to regularly riding his ATV. So Richards suggested a sleeve that will fill out Reynolds' shirt while he's riding.

For Richards, the question is always the same.

"What do we need to do," he says, "to get [the patient] doing what he used to do?"

MassDevice Q&A: GE Healthcare's David Freeman

November 17, 2009 by Brad Perriello

It's no secret that wireless technology is in a growth spurt. From WiFi cars on commuter trains to the omnipresent Bluetooth and iPhone devices, as the saying goes, "There's an app for that."

The medical industry is no exception. Wireless medical devices are becoming more and more common, with innovations like pacemakers that can send data directly to physicians. GE Healthcare is looking to push the envelope even further, with a vision for wireless medical monitoring systems that would eliminate the rat's nest of cables that spring up around hospital patients.

MassDevice Q&A: Maggie Pax

October 23, 2009 by Brian Johnson

MicroCHIPS Inc. may have been the result of divine inspiration (as the story goes, MIT professor Robert Langer thought of the idea while watching PBS), but it took people like Maggie Pax to turn his vision into a suite of implantable devices that could one day revolutionize medicine.

MassDevice Q&A: Steve Atkinson & Scott Schorer

October 19, 2009 by Brad Perriello

When Systagenix Wound Management, the former professional wound care business of Johnson & Johnson's Ethicon subsidiary, was carved out late last year, the timing wasn't propitious. Credit markets were frozen and the global economy was staring into an abyss with another Great Depression at the bottom.

Nearly a year later, it's a different story. The credit crisis has eased, there are signals that the recession may be coming to an end and Systagenix is on a roll, having engineered the spinout with help from backers One Equity Partners and JP MorganChase.

MassDevice Q&A: William Rutan

October 14, 2009 by Brian Johnson

How do you get people to talk to their doctors about something so embarrassing they'll barely admit it to themselves?

That's the challenge facing Greenwich, Conn.-based medical device startup Mederi Therapeutics and the minimally invasive treatment for fecal incontinence it says will eliminate the need for drastic colostomy procedures.

Mass Device Q&A: Dave Kroll

October 5, 2009 by Jim Montalto

Dave Kroll, the founder and principal of Kroll Associates, works out of his office in western Massachusetts, which, according to him, proves there is life in design and product development beyond Worcester and the Greater Boston area.

In fact, Kroll sees his distance from Boston as an advantage, since he can also tap New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and beyond for new work.

He has clients in and around Boston, sure — one of his biggest is in Waltham — but his ties to New England universities, contractors and manufacturers, and his persistence in maintaining a presence with clients, either virtually or through office visits, keeps him on top of the industry.

MassDevice Q&A: Dave Bergstein

September 30, 2009 by Brad Perriello

Ask Dave Bergstein about the next big thing in diagnostics and his eyes light up. The Zoíray Technologies Inc. founder and CEO runs startup that's developing a next-generation multiplexed immunoassay platform Bergstein thinks will become the new state-of-the-art standard for studying proteins.

MassDevice Q&A: Richard Schumacher

September 21, 2009 by Brad Perriello

Richard Schumacher is no stranger to successful start-ups. The Pressure BioSciences founder, president and CEO had a hand in five early-stage life science ventures, including Boston Biomedica.

MassDevice Q&A: John McDonough

August 4, 2009 by Joe Nowlan

John McDonough, CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based T2 Biosystems Inc., is an optimist.

Bullish on his 22-employee company's prospects (the estimated $40 billion diagnostics market might have something to do with that), McDonough (far left in the picture at right) spoke with MassDevice about the technology behind T2's diagnostic device, which uses a miniaturized version of a magnetic resonance imaging machine to deliver near-instant test results from just about any blood, urine or saliva sample.

MassDevice Q&A: Jean-Marc Wismer

July 14, 2009 by Brian Johnson

You literally cannot see glaucoma coming.

Although it's one of the leading causes of blindness in the world, frighteningly little is known about a disease group that affects 4 percent of the world's population over the age of 40. No cure is on the horizon. And due to the insidious nature of the disease, which stars gradually affecting sight from the periphery, most people don't even know they're suffering from glaucoma until it's too late.

Swiss diagnostics company Sensimed AG sees this mysterious disease as a real opportunity.

MassDevice Q&A: Stuart Randle

July 7, 2009 by Brad Perriello

Stuart Randle, president and CEO of Lexington-based GI Dynamics, has a long career in medical devices under his belt. Originally a mechanical engineer with a degree from Cornell University, Randle got into the device world during his MBA studies at Northwestern University and never looked back.

MassDevice Q&A: Shawna Gvazdauskas

June 30, 2009 by Brian Johnson

Shawna Gvazdauskas has a knack for bringing medical devices to market. The 53-year-old is on the third start-up of her 30-year career. In March, she left insulin management maker Insulet, where she helped bring the company's flagship Omnipod to market, for a new challenge at Isis Biopolymer Inc., which is developing a new generation of non-invasive drug delivery patches.

MassDevice Q&A: Amar Sawhney

June 19, 2009 by Brian Johnson

Amar Sawhney has a knack for turning gel into gold.

Over the years, the serial entrepreneur managed to leverage his work in hydrogel technology at the University of Texas into the basis for six companies, including one snapped up by Genzyme early in the decade and another that Covidien predecessor Tyco Healthcare acquired in 2006.

MassDevice Q&A: Jeff Burbank

June 10, 2009 by Jim Montalto

More than 20 years of developing, marketing and manufacturing products for end-stage renal disease patients led NxStage Medical Inc. founder, president and CEO Jeff Burbank to a realizations: The key to improving care is to look beyond the hospital and into the home.

The Lawrence-based company makes a home dialysis system that allows patients with kidney disease to better manage their own treatment. Burbank talked with MassDevice about how the success of the product hinges on improving patients' quality of life and how the success of the company relies on the timing of finding and keeping great employees.

MassDevice Q&A: Paul Nickelsberg

June 9, 2009 by Jim Montalto

Orchid Technologies Engineering & Consulting president and CTO Paul Nickelsberg is an electronics industry veteran, with experience ranging from high-end computing design to networking and telecommunications under his belt.

But it was his "try anything once" attitude that helped him break into the medical devices market.MassDevice caught up with Nickelsberg recently to get his ideas on coming challenges for the medical device market and his strategy for keeping clients happy during uncertain economic times.

MassDevice: How did your company get into medical devices?

Pumped up

June 3, 2009 by Alison Carter

The symptoms had started about three weeks before — feeling constantly tired and thirsty, going to the bathroom frequently and losing a drastic amount of weight.

My doctor told my parents to bring me to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where I would learn how to adjust my diet and schedule, administer medication and deal with the illness.

Letting in the light

May 19, 2009 by Jim Montalto

There's a certain irony to Amorphex Therapeutics working in the dark basement of a 100-year-old Andover mill building.

"It’s atrocious, but classic," president and CEO Robert Thompson laughs, trying to explain the peculiarity of scientists working on cutting-edge ophthalmic technology in an antiquated former mill complex.

MassDevice Q&A: MassMEDIC president Tom Sommer

May 1, 2009 by Brad Perriello

Tom Sommer's been a major player on the Massachusetts medical device scene for more than a dozen years. As president of the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council (MassMEDIC), Sommer runs the nations largest regional medical device council, addressing the needs of more than 400 member companies.

With the council's May 5 annual conference on the horizon, MassDevice visited Sommer at MassMEDIC's offices at the Boston Medical Center (PDF) campus to find out what's on the minds of the device company executives he visits each week, how they're coping with a down economy and the challenges imposed by the Bay State's stringent gift ban.

Banned in Boston

April 6, 2009 by Chris Markuns

Pharma is sexy. Big drugs, big money, big news. In the life sciences arena, perhaps only biotech commands a higher political and public profile.

So it isn’t surprising that the medical device industry’s groundbreaking inclusion in Massachusetts’ new code of conduct garnered relatively little attention.

But the new rules governing industry payments to physicians — the so-called "gift ban" — include provisions aimed at curbing what some call undue and improper influence by medical device manufacturers.

Thinking small to solve big problems

March 30, 2009 by Joe Nowlan

When it comes to little children, medical devices can be a very big problem.

Take Dr. Thomas Tracy, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at Brown University. Virtually every day, Tracy deals with the fallout from the lack of child-sized medical devices.

“It just impacts your life every day, when you turn around and there’s yet another [device] you can’t apply to a kid,” says Tracy, professor of surgery and pediatrics at Brown University and pediatric surgery chief at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, R.I.

Organic growth

March 30, 2009 by Brandie Jefferson

It turns out the secrets of science aren't always on the tip of your nose.

At Organogenesis, a Canton-based tissue regeneration firm, the company’s signature product, Apligraf, is derived from the cells of foreskins donated by the mothers of newborn baby boys. A single donor can eventually generate up to two football fields’ worth of Apligraf, according to Dario Eklund, the company’s VP of bioengineering and bioaesthetics.

That’s because the newborn donors’ cells are "so young, so robust, so full of life, that they can divide and build cell banks," Eklund explains.

Running in place

March 30, 2009 by Brian Johnson

CORRECTION

Inc. magazine ran the following correction Dec. 1: