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Vermont enacts nation’s strictest gifts ban

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The MassDevice Weekly Roundup brings you the latest medical device news and information.

News

Vermont enacts nation’s strictest gifts ban
The movement to monitor and regulate industry gifts to physicians gains momentum as The Green Mountain State enacts sweeping rules covering the practice. Read More read-more<br>

Pubget aims to simplify life science research
Cambridge life sciences search engine offers copyright-safe research of life sciences literature from around the world. Read More more arrow

Exact Sciences cuts research deal with Mayo Clinic, closes $8 million stock placement
Marlborough colorectal cancer screening developer inks a research and licensing agreement with the Minnesota clinic and closes a private placement deal for more than 4 million shares of its stock. Read More more arrow

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Features

MassDevice Q&A: Michael Phalen
The president of Boston Scientific’s endoscopy division on putting patients first and why he’s worried about the medical device industry’s ability to innovate. Read More more arrow

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Blogs

MassDevice blog: Device giants battle over the neurostim, orthobiologic and cosmetic laser markets
St. Jude goes deep-brain, Bone Solutions launches potential Stryker Biotech rival product and Palomar’s consumer device lights up Wall Street. Read More more arrow

Healthcare blog: The Lion of the Senate lays down
Every week, veteran healthcare reporter Tinker Ready rounds up the latest news for MassDevice. This week, she takes a look at Ted Kennedy’s in absentia healthcare reform bill, John Kerry’s defense of the status quo in Boston and how the reverberations from a New Yorker article reached into the Oval Office. Read More more arrow

Dollars & Spence: Are things really that bad?
The good, the bad and the ugly: Current conditions in venture capital. Read More more arrow

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The MassDevice Checkup

Our weekly checkup takes the temperature of the 63 public medical device companies in the MassDevice Index. In addition to the index itself, which tracks the overall movement of the sector, we compare Monday morning’s opening share prices with their value when the markets close Friday afternoon and calculate the biggest gainers and losers. The checkup also takes a look at a different financial metric each week, ranking local players based on their performance in that category. This week we examine the quick ratio or “acid test,” a measure of liquidity. Read More more arrow

Supplier Spotlight

This week, the Supplier Spotlight shines on Massachusetts Materials Research, an independent materials testing and engineering company that provides a full suite of materials and product testing services. It’s one of roughly 1,000 companies and service providers listed in the MassDevice Network. Browse the MassDevice Network more arrow

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Vermont enacts nation’s strictest gifts ban

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Vermont Governor Jim Douglas signed the nation’s most restrictive ban on industry gifts to physicians June 8, making it the latest in a string of states and institutions to regulate the practice.

The Green Mountain State’s new rules impose even more stringent rules than the famously strict regulations already in place in Massachusetts.

Both states restrict nearly all gifts to physicians, including meals. But unlike the Bay State, which requires public disclosure of all payments of more than $50, Vermont’s rules call for full transparency for all gifts and payments to doctors by device makers and drug companies and bars free meals altogether.

Similar rules are in place for pharmaceutical firms doing business in Minnesota, Maine and the District of Columbia, but the Massachusetts and Vermont rules are the first to fold device makers into the mix. Oregon is considering regulations similar to Vermont’s.

Medical device industry advocates fear such bans will suffocate innovation in the field, which often requires close cooperation between doctors and medical device developers.

Tom Sommer, president of the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council (MassMEDIC), told MassDevice that rolling the devices industry up in gift bans shows that policy makers don’t understand the medical device development process.

“It will affect the way medical device companies here in Massachusetts work with the medical community. We’ll need to go elsewhere in order to effectively work with them,” Sommer said. “We don’t believe that policymakers fully understand the process required of medical device companies to develop new and innovative products.

“It’s bad public policy and it will have a negative effect on the future growth of the device industry here. The impact is not going to be immediate, but it’s going to be long-term.”

Advocates for the rules say they’re needed to rein in out-of-control marketing and sales spends that they claim drive up the cost of medical devices and prescription drugs and give industry undue influence over physicians.

The Vermont rules are the latest in a string of initiatives to rein in medical device and drug industry remuneration to doctors. On top of the Massachusetts rules barring even the lowly promotional pen, Partners Healthcare, which counts three of the larget hospital systems in Massachusetts as members, banned all industry sales reps from its halls last month.

Farther afield, Johns Hopkins University forbade its docs from accepting free samples, gifts, entertainment, food and no-show consulting gigs.

And the Institute of Medicine, the medical board of the National Academy of Sciences, in April recommended that physicians reject all gifts, payments or other compensation from industry.

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