MassDevice Top Five medtech stories weekTwo important medtech industry hires are among the top stories on MassDevice this week, with robotic surgery and COVID-19 vaccines also dominating the news.

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. Titan Medical closes on $11.5M offering

Titan Medical (TSX:TMD; NSDQ:TMDI) closed on a previously announced offering, raising $11.5 million in aggregate gross proceeds. The Toronto-based surgical robotics company conducted the sale by way of a short form prospectus in each of the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario — as well as a private placement in the U.S. Read the full story. 

4. Butterfly Network names new CEO before going public via merger

Dr. Todd Fruchterman previously spent 10 years at 3M, where he recently served as president & GM of the company’s medical solutions division. Butterfly develops the Butterfly iQ system, a transducer using semiconductor technology that can perform whole-body imaging using a single handheld probe. Read the full story. 

3. Mylan must face EpiPen racketeering lawsuit

A federal judge in Minnesota has decided that Mylan must face a lawsuit accusing it of paying bribes and kickbacks to pharmacy benefit managers and of conspiring to fix prices on its EpiPen device. Read the full story. 

2. Zimmer Biomet names chief transformation officer

Zimmer Biomet (NYSE:ZBH) recently appointed Ellie Humphrey to the newly created position of chief transformation officer, effective Jan. 19. Prior to joining the company, Humphrey held several leadership roles at Medtronic, including VP of enterprise excellence and business transformation. Read the full story. 

1. J&J’s Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine study results raise more alarms about new variants

The vaccine candidate from Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies was 66% effective overall in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 28 days after vaccination. But it proved less effective in South Africa, where a new variant of the virus has appeared, offering just 57% protection from moderate-to-severe infection there (where 95% of cases were due to infection from the variant). Read the full story.