Provent Nose Plugs Win Medical Design Award

Ventus Medical Inc. out of Belmont, California won a prize in the Rehabilitation and Assistive-Technology Products category in this year’s Medical Design Excellence Awards. The company markets novel nose plugs that help those suffering from obstructive sleep apnea sleep better. By using a valve to increase intranasal pressure when breathing out, clinical studies have shown [...]

Starkey S Series Hearing Aids with Drive Architecture Processing

Starkey Laboratories (Eden Prairie, MN) is introducing a new series of hearing aids that promise higher fidelity and smart behavior in different audio situations. Featuring parallel multi-threading processors, the system can calculate specialized algorithms to a greater degree of precision, leading to better sound quality. PureWave Feedback Eliminator, delivering broader bandwidth, faster processing and intelligent [...]

LifeBelt CPR Device Wins in Design Contest

Pictured above is the LifeBelt® CPR, a device from Deca-Medics Inc., of Columbus, Ohio, which has recently won a $20,000 grand prize in the Create the Future Design Contest sponsored by NASA’s Tech Briefs Media Group and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. NASA Tech Briefs explains what the device is all about: Developed by Thomas Lach [...]

Magnus Operating Table from Maquet

MAQUET has just unveiled improvements to its Magnus operating table, a system that can position the patient into virtually any surgical position, and at the same time accommodate patients weighing up to 250 kilograms. From the press release: An optimum exposure area is achieved in combination with gravitational force and the operating table’s extreme tilting [...]

RADI and GE Healthcare Collaboration Delivers First Wireless FFR Monitoring

RADI, a St. Jude Medical subsidiary out of Sweden, has partnered with GE Healthcare to deliver the first wireless system for measuring fractional flow reserve (FFR) for coronary vasculature. FFR is defined as the pressure distal to a coronary stenosis relative to the pressure before the stenosis. FFR is a technique that allows to discover [...]

PAS-Port Connector For Bypass

New FDA approved device to anastomose saphenous vein grafts to the aorta with out sidebitting or clamping the aorta.

Exchangeable Cardiac Valves from ValveXchange

Yesterday, at the 2009 Frost & Sullivan Excellence in Medical Technologies & Life Sciences Awards Banquet, we discovered an interesting new technology from an Aurora, Colorado based startup ValveXchange, Inc. The company is trying to implement a bioprosthetic valve system, designed for both mitral and aortic positions, that can last a lifetime, albeit an occasional [...]

Impella 2.5 Heart Pump Performs Well in a Feasibility Trial

A multicenter prospective feasibility study of the Impella 2.5 temporary cardiac assist device (The PROTECT I Trial), published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology, has found that the device is “easy to implant, and provides excellent hemodynamic support during high-risk PCI.” That is good news for Abiomed, the manufacturer of the device which [...]

Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Goes Mobile with RENASYS GO

Smith & Nephew has released a new negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) device specifically designed for people who want/need to ambulate. Unlike its larger cousins, the RENASYS GO can be worn around the neck like a fashionable MP3 player. Except, it sucks at your gross wound, but no one has to know. From the press [...]

Genesis IPG Now for Chronic Angina

St. Jude Medical received European approval to market the company’s Genesis implantable pulse generator (IPG) for pain relief due to chronic angina. The spinal cord stimulator already has approval in the US and Europe for treatment of neuropathic pain of the trunk and limbs and pain from back surgeries that have failed. From the product [...]