Say hello to MassDevice +5, a bite-sized view of the top five medtech stories of the day. This feature of MassDevice.com’s coverage highlights our 5 biggest and most influential stories from the day’s news to make sure you’re up to date on the headlines that continue to shape the medical device industry.
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5. Is there a digital health solution for treating pain?
Could TENS devices be a potential answer to the opioid crisis? If they are, it’ll be thanks to digital health.
Case in point is NeuroMetrix’s Quell device. Read more
4. Industry panels disintegrate in wake of Trump remarks
A pair of industry panels convened by President Donald Trump disintegrated today in the wake of his latest comments on the racist violence in Charlottesville.
After Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier announced on Monday that he planned to leave Donald Trump’s manufacturing advisory panel, a wave of executives followed in his path. Read more
3. India institutes price caps for orthopedic knee implants
Indian regulators are capping prices of orthopedic knee implants as the country looks to lower the cost of medical devices.
The country’s drug pricing authority said today that orthopedic implants in the country had unjustified, unreasonable and irrationally high trade margins, which led to exorbitant pricing. Read more
2. ReCor Medical adds another $12m for trial of Paradise renal denervation device
ReCor Medical last week added a $12 million contribution from Otsuka Pharmaceutical to the $10 million it raised from the Japanese conglomerate last year for a clinical trial of its Paradise renal denervation device for treating hypertension, ReCor president & CEO Andrew Weiss told MassDevice.com this morning.
In May 2016 Otsuka participated in a strategic investment of an unspecified amount; Weiss told us that that round and the $12 million debt financing added last week are earmarked for the Radiance-HTN efficacy study of the Paradise device, which is designed to use ultrasound waves rather than radiofrequency ablation of nerves lining the renal artery to treat high blood pressure. ReCor won an investigational device exemption from the FDA in February 2016 for the Radiance-HTN study, which launched in April of that year. Read more
1. Appeals court splits Stryker-DePuy poaching beef
A federal appeals court yesterday split up a sales rep poaching dispute between Stryker and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary DePuy Orthopaedics, sending some claims to a California district court and others to the federal court in New Jersey.
Stryker’s Howmedica unit in June 2014 accused DePuy and a distributor of gutting its presence in the northern California orthopedic reconstructive surgery market with a “calculated and deliberate raiding” of its sales force there, according to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey. The suit alleged that DePuy helped a quintet of Stryker Howmedica sales reps – Brett Sarkisian, Keegan Freeman, Michael Nordyke, Taylor Smith and Bryan Wyatt – defect and take some of their customers with them. Read more
