The Medical Device Business Journal — Medical Device News & Articles | MassDevice
NxStage Medical Inc. closed its $40 million debt financing deal with Asahi Kasei Kuraray Medical.
The deal enables the Lawrence hemodialysis products maker to pay off a nearly $30 million GE credit facility. The rest of the money will be used to support the company’s general operations.
NxStage officials said they expect to take a $2 million pre-tax charge related to closing out the GE tab.
{IMAGERIGHT:http://www.massdevice.com/sites/default/files/checkup/090609_index.jpg}Our Weekly Checkup takes the temperature of the 63 public medical device companies in the MassDevice Index. The index is weighted according to market capitalization, based on the number of shares outstanding for each company from its most recent quarterly report and each Friday’s closing share price.
The index for the week ended June 5 closed with a reading of 5.43, up nearly 7.3 percent compared with the prior week. It’s the third consecutive week of increases; since we began tracking these companies in late March, the index has risen 11.7 percent.
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About 4,000 physicians in Maine will have access to a suite of electronic healthcare records and billing software made by Athenahealth Inc., thanks to a new alliance announced earlier in the week.
The Watertown-based electronic health care records company said it will provide its products to the Medical Network Inc. of Maine, an independent physicians’ network of 4,000 doctors, allied health providers, ancillary facilities and hospitals spanning the entire Pine Tree State.
In an intriguing TED-style presentation by Dr. Greg Petsko at this week’s Massachusetts Life Sciences Start-up Initiative convention, the renowned Brandeis/Harvard professor and co-founder of combinatorial chemistry pioneer ArQule, issued a throw-down:
“We need a way to persuade drug companies to part with these compounds and let them be tested on a broad spectrum of diseases so that we can actually find alternative uses.”
Early in May, the Obama administration’s health reform initiative received a major boost — or at least a public relations coup — when representatives of six major healthcare system stakeholder organizations convened at the White House and promised to work to deliver $1.7 trillion in healthcare cost reductions over the next 10 years.
Inverness Medical Innovations agreed to acquire British drug testing products maker Concateno plc for a cash-and-stock deal worth roughly $201 million.
The Waltham diagnostics maker will pay Concateno’s stockholders about $131 million in cash (around $1.27 per share) and 0.02 shares of Inverness stock for each of the British firm’s 103.2 million shares (roughly $0.68 worth of each share, or about $30 million worth in total).
Carl Byers, the CFO who helped take Athenahealth Inc. from its early start-up days through an initial public offering and finally to profitability, will step down in early 2010.
Byers, 37, said he’s leaving the Watertown-based electronic healthcare records company to “pursue a family goal to live abroad.” He will also relinquish his role as company treasurer. Officials at Athenahealth said he will work with the company’s search committee to appoint his successor.
Palomar Medical Technologies Inc. landed Food & Drug Adminstration approval for over-the-counter sales of a new consumer device that uses lasers on wrinkles.
Developed in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson, the new device is the first of its kind to be approved for OTC sales in the United States.
Analogic Corp. gained some ground during the 2009 third quarter, compared with the second, but its quarterly sales and earnings were still far off their marks from a year ago.
The Peabody medical imaging products maker posted sales of $93.6 million for the period ended April 30, an 8.8 percent plunge compared with the second quarter and an 8.9 percent drop compared with the same period last year.
Net income for the third quarter slipped 66.3 percent to $2.3 million, compared with the third quarter of 2008, but rose nearly 59 percent compared with $1.4 million during the 2009 second quarter.
NMT Medical Inc.‘s shareholders re-elected its slate of directors and named Deloitte & Touche LLP as its official auditors.
Voting at the Boston cardiac implant maker’s annual shareholders meeting, stockholders re-elected Francis Martin, Cheryl Clarkson, Daniel Hanley, James Mahoney Jr. and David West to the company’s board of directors and approved its stock incentive plan.
