A Medical Device Daily

Aircraft Medical (Edinburgh, Scotland) reported that it has entered the emergent depth of anesthesia monitoring market with the acquisition of Morpheus Medical (Barcelona, Spain), a developer of patient monitoring devices for the anesthesia and critical care markets. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Morpheus' lead product, the IoC-View, is designed to measure the level of consciousness during general anesthesia, helping to avoid the risk of patients remaining conscious through a procedure or conversely of receiving too much anesthetic, impeding a fast recovery.

Morpheus was founded by Erik Webber Jensen, a researcher in the area of level of consciousness assessment during general anesthesia. Erik has been involved in the development of several anesthesia monitors currently on the market. He will stay with the company in the new position of CTO of the Barcelona group.

Aircraft said the acquisition is in line with its long-term strategic aim of developing a broader product offering for the anesthesia and critical care markets.

"The acquisition of Morpheus provides us with an excellent platform to expand our product offering in the anesthesia and critical care markets and is an important step towards achieving our strategic goal of becoming a global technology leader in these markets," said Matt McGrath, CEO of Aircraft.

In other dealmaking news, Progressive MRI (Falls Church, Virginia) reports it is now one of the largest physician-owned providers of radiological services in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., region with the successful purchase of nine imaging centers in Maryland from Medical Resources (Bloomfield, New Jersey). The purchase agreement was completed May 19 for an undisclosed price and Progressive has already taken over administration of the centers.

The transaction is significant because Progressive, in addition to owning and operating its own centers, reads and diagnoses imaging from 19 other centers, which means Progressive now provides medical leadership to a total of 28 imaging centers. In addition, Progressive maintains a unique position in the field because many of its 23 radiologists are also experts in subspecialties.

Progressive performs thousands of radiology examinations in its facilities in every facet of radiology, including MRI, CAT scan, ultrasound, general X-ray and nuclear medicine.