• Cynosure (Westford, Massachusetts) has launched the Affirm CO₂, an ablative workstation with a proprietary scanning delivery system that combines ablative CO₂ skin resurfacing and rejuvenation in a single laser system. The Affirm CO₂ system with micro-ablative scanning technology is the newest addition to Cynosure's Affirm family of products for anti-aging indications. The original Affirm workstation, introduced in 2006, delivers a non-ablative treatment designed to produce progressive results in patients with fine to moderate wrinkles and sun-damaged skin. By contrast, the Affirm CO₂ workstation uses an ablative approach to target the epidermal and dermal layer with the objective of treating dyschromia, deep wrinkles and significant photo-aging. Cynosure makes light-based aesthetic treatment systems.

• Health Market Science (King of Prussia, Pennsylvania) reported the launch of Clinical Investigators, its latest innovation for clinical site recruitment. The company said Clinical Investigators "dramatically reduces" the time needed by pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations to recruit physicians for clinical trials by providing online access to up-to-date national databases of physician reference data, clinical trial experience, and claims volume rankings. Clinical Investigators links a web-based user interface with a national, comprehensive database of trial experience detail, claims data, and Health Market Science's Provider Master File. With more than 4.5 million individual providers and 1 million healthcare organizations, the Health Market Science Provider Master File is a trusted source of physician site detail and affiliations, according to Health Market Science.

• Mindray Medical International (Shenzhen, China) said that it will highlight all of its marketed in vitro diagnostic products as well as unveil three new units and reagents at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. Mindray will introduce its entire line of in vitro diagnostic products at the conference, along with three demo units: the BC-5300 and BC-5380, both of which are hematology analyzers, the BA-88A, a semi-automatic biochemistry analyzer, and the first five reagents for the biochemistry analyzer. Mindray makes a broad range of products across three primary business segments: patient monitoring & life support products, in vitro diagnostic products and medical imaging systems.

• NovaBone Products (Jacksonville, Florida) has released a new form of the synthetic bone graft, NovaBone Putty (bone graft substitute). NovaBone, a calcium-phosphate silicate, goes through an ionic dissolution process that signals the body to send more precursors to the wound site earlier and forms an apatite surface layer that acts as a framework for osteoblast attachment and new bone formation. This results in an increase in osteoblast function over the first few weeks. The FDA has approved the term osteostimulation to describe Nova Bone's capability. NovaBone is the only synthetic that is osteostimulative, directly increasing the proliferation and activity of osteoblasts, the cells responsible for new bone growth. This results in more extensive early bone formation than seen for other synthetic graft materials when evaluated during in vivo testing. NovaBone Products makes synthetic bone graft substitutes.