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.
Get this in your inbox everyday by subscribing to our newsletters.
5. UVC LEDs: Energizing a new generation of portable, healthcare disinfection devices
According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), one in every 25 hospital patients in the U.S. will contract a hospital-acquired infection (HAI) during their visit. Often expensive and sometimes fatal, HAIs are adding billions to the country’s already bourgeoning healthcare costs.
For decades, hospitals and other healthcare facilities have employed ultraviolet germicidal irradiation systems (more recently referred to as germicidal UV or GUV), equipped with low-pressure mercury vapor lamps as an added layer of disinfection for a variety of applications ranging from operating rooms to the air circulating in the building’s ductwork. Read more
4. Ex-Cleveland Clinic director Fingerhut pleads guilty in $3m fraud case
Former Cleveland Clinic Innovations director Gary Fingerhut plead guilty this week to charges that he helped defraud the clinic out of more than $2.7 million and will face several years in federal prison, according to a Cleveland.com report.
Fingerhut was fired in 2015 after the FBI notified the clinic of financial transactions that violated the hospital system’s internal policies. Cleveland Clinic Innovations is the commercialization arm of the clinic, created to form spinouts based on clinic-developed technologies. Fingerhut joined CCI as general manager for IT commercialization in 2009 and was named executive director in 2013. Read more
3. Why the medical device industry is interested in multiphysics modeling
At COMSOL‘s annual conference this year, a panel of medical device industry members and innovators gathered to discuss computer modeling in the design and development of devices. The panel included Paul Belk, principal engineer at Abbott; Dr. Steven Conrad, professor of medicine at Louisiana State University; Freddy Hansen, senior R&D physicist at Abbott; Nicolas Huc, product manager of the heat transfer module at COMSOL; and moderator Kyle Koppenhoefer, principal at AltaSim Technologies. Read more
2. OrthoPediatrics prices $52m IPO
OrthoPediatrics today priced its initial public offering at $13 per share, meaning the 4-million-share flotation pulled in $52 million for its line of surgical systems for children.
The offering includes a 30-day underwriters over-allotment of 600,000 extra shares, which if fully exercised would push the IPO’s total raise to $59.8 million. Read more
1. FDA clears Siemens Magnetom Terra 7T MRI
The FDA today granted 510(k) clearance to the first seven-tesla magnetic resonance imaging system approved for the U.S market, the Magnetom Terra system made by Siemens Healthineers.
“The overall image quality of MRI improves with higher magnetic field strength,” FDA radiological health director Robert Ochs said in prepared remarks. “The added field strength allows for better visualization of smaller structures and subtle pathologies that may improve disease diagnosis.” Read more
