• Bovie Medical (Melville, New York) has filed a 510(k) FDA submission to begin marketing the ICON VS electrosurgical generator. The generator has been designed to work with Bovie's Seal-N-Cut line of vessel sealing instruments providing both monopolar and bipolar energy options to the surgeon. The fully digital ICON VS generator has a user friendly interface allowing the surgeon flexibility to choose the type of effect desired. The monopolar and bipolar functions satisfy a wide variety of surgical demands needed during surgeries including vessel sealing.

• Celerus Diagnostics (Carpinteria, California) reported that it will introduce a totally automated immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining system to the market next year. According to CEO David Gross, the new Wave RPD, will provide laboratory results faster and more flexibly than anything known to the industry. "The key is uniting total automation with our existing rapid staining system," he said. "No manual pretreatment will be required, as is necessary with many existing legacy staining platforms." Celerus Diagnostics introduced Rapid IHC with its Wave System in 2008. In addition to standard IHC applications, breast, neuro and Mohs surgeons benefit significantly from intraoperative results made possible in just 15 minutes.

• Cochlear Americas (Denver) said that the FDA has cleared the Cochlear Baha BP100 Sound Processor, a programmable bone conduction hearing solution. The Baha BP100 is designed for people with conductive hearing loss, mixed hearing loss or single-sided sensorineural deafness. The Baha BP100 features a bone-anchored hearing solution with automatic digital signal processing. The automatic signal processing functions automatically adapt to the user's sound environment, helping to provide greater audibility and listening comfort across different listening environments. The Baha system sends external sounds to the inner ear through the bone by passing the outer and middle ear. Bone-anchored hearing solutions are designed to provide audibility and to improve the communication abilities of those who receive little or no benefit from hearing aids.

• InfoLogix (Hatboro, Pennsylvania) reported the introduction of a new mobility offering for healthcare providers, the InfoLogix M24 mobile clinical assistant: a powerful mobile computing solution that enables medical professionals to access critical patient information at the point-of-care. The InfoLogix M24 is built upon the Intel mobile clinical assistant reference architecture, which is designed specifically for healthcare and the rigors of the clinical environment, including integrated technologies that support the "five rights" of medication administration and provide more streamlined and efficient workflows. Also, the InfoLogix M24 features an array of technologies such as a bar code scanner, a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader, a fingerprint reader, a webcam, and a microphone array. InfoLogix says these innovative tools enable hospital staff to access valuable patient data quickly and easily which can help reduce the number of errors and allow clinicians to spend more quality time with patients.

• Spiration (Redmond, Washington) said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has approved a new technology add-on payment (NTAP) for IBV Valve System use in the hospital inpatient setting to control prolonged air leaks or air leaks likely to become prolonged following lobectomy, segmentectomy or lung volume reduction surgery. The new technology add-on payment is used by CMS as a means to correct for inadequate payment of new technologies under the existing Medicare payment groupings, called Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Groups (MS-DRGs). CMS regulation considers the NTAP "additional payment when it represents an advance in medical technology that substantially improves, relative to technologies previously available, the diagnosis or treatment of Medicare beneficiaries."