These 5 medtech companies made it into the top 200 of Forbes’ best places to work list

Johnson & Johnson, Steris, Philips, Fujifilm Holdings and Boston Scientific were recently named among Forbes’ best large employers in America, based on feedback from their employees.

Forbes partnered with a market research firm to survey 50,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees. Survey participants were asked to rate their willingness to recommend their employer to friends and family and to nominate a business that wasn’t their own.

Get the full story on our sister site, Medical Design & Outsourcing.

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DTW Podcast: Zimmer Biomet slims, Corza Medical grows in pursuit of grabbing market share

In this week’s DeviceTalks Weekly Podcast, Rich Newitter, managing director at SVB Leerink, says Zimmer Biomet’s decision to spin out its spinal and dental business will accelerate its already impressive market share grab in its core orthopedics industry.

Dewitter says CEO Bryan Hanson brings a tried-and-true diversification model used by companies like his former employer, Covidien. The spinout of the spinal and dental businesses into a NewCo will allows the company to focus more resources on selling knee and hip implants as well as building out an impressive robotics franchise and a potentially sector-leading line of digital tools and sensors.

“Zimmer has effectively gone from a share loser for almost a decade leading up to when Bryan Hanson took over to a share-taking position,” he said in an interview with Chris Newmarker, executive editor of life sciences. “This most recent quarter, their share gains have widened quite dramatically.”

In …

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MedTech 100 roundup: Index rebounds from dip with another all-time high

The end of January saw the first major dip for the medtech industry but the beginning of February brought yet another peak.

MassDevice‘s MedTech 100 index ended the week (Feb. 5) at 108.23 points, marking a 4% rise from the 104.05-point mark set at the end of the previous week (Jan. 29).

The final mark for the week sets an all-time best for the index, which had previously reached 106.81 points on Jan. 8, then 107.4 points on Jan. 20. The rise has been remarkable, considering the index had never reached even the 100-point mark before November 2020.

Medtech’s latest rise means the index has risen 17.2% from the pre-COVID-19 pandemic high of 92.32, set on Feb. 19, 2020. Additionally, the industry has very much rebounded from its lowest place, a 62.13-point mark at the start of the pandemic on March 23, 2020. Since that point, the industry has jumped 74.2%.

Here are some of the best-performing medtech stocks from 2020.

Medtech’s performanc…

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FDA labels Boston Scientific ICD electrode recall serious

The EMBLEM S-ICD subcutaneous electrode with an arrow showing where separation usually happens (distal to the proximal sense ring) (Image courtesy of the FDA)

The FDA today declared the recall of a Boston Scientific subcutaneous electrode used in implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) as Class 1, the most serious.

The company warned physicians in December 2020 that approximately 47,000 Emblem S-ICD1 subcutaneous electrodes (model 3501) may fracture. Boston Scientific said at the time that it had received 27 reports of electrode body fractures at a location just distal to the proximal sense ring in devices distributed worldwide since 2017. One patient died, the company said.

Separately, the FDA reported there had been 26 reports of serious injuries and said its recall covers 19,919 units of the devices.

Such fractures may lead to “inappropriate shock therapy (IAS) in select programmed sense configurations,” the company said in December. If high-vo…

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Boston Scientific misses Q4 Street projections as revenues dip

Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) shares ticked up this morning despite fourth-quarter results that missed the consensus forecast.

The Marlborough, Mass.-based company posted profits of $152 million, or 10¢ per share, on sales of $2.7 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2020, for a 96.2% bottom-line slide on a sales decline of -6.8%.

Adjusted to exclude one-time items, earnings per share were 23¢, 8¢ behind Wall Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $2.8 billion.

Boston Scientific experienced particular hits in its specialty pharmaceuticals business (-38.5% decline) and its cardiovascular arm (-12% drop). The rhythm and neuro segment saw a -6.1% dip, with its interventional cardiology sub-business seeing a -21.9% fall.

The company highlighted that, within its organic results (which saw a fourth-quarter revenue decline of 8% year-over-year), there was a negative impact associated with the conversion of U.S.-based Watchman customers to…

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3M, Abbott in top 50 of Fortune’s most admired companies list

[Photo by Guillermo Latorre on Unsplash]Medtech giants  3M (NYSE:MMM) and Abbott (NYSE:ABT) made it into the top 50 of Fortune‘s 2021 World’s Most Admired Companies list.

3M — a manufacturing conglomerate that also has one of the largest medical device businesses in the world — came in at No. 24, up from No. 29 in the 2020 list. Abbott meanwhile was No. 42, up from No. 52.

Both companies have been playing important roles in efforts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

3M is an important supplier of N95 masks and other protective gear for healthcare and other essential workers.

Abbott in early 2020 developed three molecular diagnostic tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus within a 30-day time span. By the late summer, it won an FDA emergency use authorization in the late summer for its speedy BinaxNow COVID-19 Ag Card antigen test.

Other medical device companies making it into the Fortune most admired companies list include Boston Scientific (…

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Medical Alley startups raise $1.4B

The Medical Alley Association announced that its startups recorded a record-setting year with $1.4 billion in fundraising in 2020.

Having broken the $1 billion barrier in 2019, the region topped that mark by the third quarter, raising nearly another half-million by the end of the year, according to a news release.

Bright Health and Bind Benefits, two health plan startups, along with Minneapolis-based Preventice Solutions — a developer of mobile health solutions and remote monitoring service for cardiac arrhythmias which was recently acquired by Boston Scientific — led the way in funding.

Preventice’s $137 million raised in 2020 topped medical device companies belonging to the region, while Bright raised a $500 million Series E to lead all Medical Alley companies.

Medical Alley’s device industry in total raised over $507 million. Relievant Medsystems followed Preventice at $70 million raised, while CVRx Inc. at $50 million and HistoSoni…

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MedTech 100 roundup: Another peak for the industry

Medtech has been on the rise in 2021 and the past week saw that trend continue, as the industry hit yet another all-time best mark.

MassDevice‘s MedTech 100 index reached 107.4 points on Jan. 20, topping the all-time best of 106.81 points set on Jan. 8. That mark represents a 16% jump from the pre-pandemic high of 92.32 set on Feb. 19, 2020, and a 72.9% overall leap from the lowest point of 62.13 set on March 23, 2020.

Here are some of the best-performing medtech stocks from 2020.

The high point could not be sustained, but the industry stayed strong, finishing at 106.4 to end the week on Jan. 22. Medtech’s finish to last week was enough to top the previous seven days, coming in 0.6% ahead of the 105.8-point mark set on Jan. 15.

While medtech saw slight growth from the previous week, one of the overall markets saw a larger jump, with the S&P 500 Index rising 1.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fared identically to medtech, rising 0.6%.

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DTW Podcast Ep. 42 – How the pandemic has accelerated, slowed medtech innovation

The pandemic has accelerated innovation in many ways but the physical pressures on entrepreneurs, innovators and engineers is very real.

In this episode of the DeviceTalks Weekly Podcast, a panel representing early-stage and tech transfer efforts explain how they’re helping individuals and young companies work through the unique challenges of the time, including finding capital, working with corporates, understanding opportunities in a changing healthcare market, seeing the silver linings

Guests include

Jennifer McCaney, PhD,,co-executive director, UCLA Biodesign Jackie Mejia, PhD, director, gBeta Medtech Scott Morley, director, office of economic partnerships, University of Pittsburgh

This conversation is a condensed version of our Jan. 19 DeviceTalks Tuesday. Go to DeviceTalks.com to watch the entire on-demand presentation.

Co-host Chris Newmarker, executive editor of MassDevice, also shares his top 5 stories of the week, aka, #Newmarker…

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DTW Podcast Ep. 42 – How the pandemic has accelerated, slowed medtech innovation

The pandemic has accelerated innovation in many ways but the physical pressures on entrepreneurs, innovators and engineers is very real.

In this episode of the DeviceTalks Weekly Podcast, a panel representing early-stage and tech transfer efforts explain how they’re helping individuals and young companies work through the unique challenges of the time, including finding capital, working with corporates, understanding opportunities in a changing healthcare market, seeing the silver linings

Guests include

Jennifer McCaney, PhD,,co-executive director, UCLA Biodesign Jackie Mejia, PhD, director, gBeta Medtech Scott Morley, director, office of economic partnerships, University of Pittsburgh

This conversation is a condensed version of our Jan. 19 DeviceTalks Tuesday. Go to DeviceTalks.com to watch the entire on-demand presentation.

Co-host Chris Newmarker, executive editor of MassDevice, also shares his top 5 stories of the week, aka, #Newmarker…

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The top 5 MassDevice stories of the week — January 22, 2021

It’s a new year with a new president who has new plans to fight the COVID-19 pandemic — a strategy that should be a big story for medtech in coming weeks.

Even as President Biden and COVID-19 dominated the news, the medical device industry saw some important news in the hot robotic surgery space and much more.

Want to hear more about the week’s top medtech news on MassDevice? Executive editor Chris Newmarker and Tom Salemi will discuss the week’s “Newmarker’s Newsmakers” — as well as play some drum and bugle corps music — during our DeviceTalks Weekly podcast.

Without further ado, here’s this week’s MassDevice Top Five:

5. DePuy Synthes lands FDA clearance for Velys robotic knee system

DePuy Synthes touts the Velys robotic-assisted platform as a first-of-its kind, table-mounted solution with an efficient design capable of integrating into any operating room. The company said it adapts to a surgeon’s workflow, offers control they are used to …

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5 innovations to make duodenoscopes more single-use — and save lives

[Images from Boston Scientific, Ambu and Olmypus]Duodenoscopes are important medical devices that are used for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) procedures. However, the devices have had serious problems in the past.

Luckily, several medical device companies have stepped in to solve the problems. (Here are five of the innovations.) 

Duodenoscopes are flexible, lighted tubes threaded through the mouth, throat and stomach into the top of the small intestine. They’re an important tool for spotting problems such as lesions and tumors in the pancreatic duct and bile duct, but the devices are also complex, with many small working parts.

“Duodenoscopes – regardless of whether they are reusable or single-use – are one of the most technically complex flexible endoscopes to design and manufacture, as they travel deep into the body with a camera mounted on the side instead of the front,” David Pierce, EVP and president of MedSurg and president of e…

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