A Medical Device Daily

Orthopedic device maker Wright Medical Group (Arlington, Tennessee) reported that it has acquired certain assets of A.M. Surgical (Smithtown, New York), a company focused on providing endoscopic soft tissue-release products for foot and ankle surgeons.

The purchase consists of an initial cash payment of $2.1 million and potential additional cash payments, not to exceed $700,000, based upon future financial performance of the acquired assets.

Wright has been marketing A.M. Surgical's foot and ankle products since October 2007 pursuant to a previously disclosed distribution agreement between the parties.

Assets acquired include all of A.M. Surgical's endoscopic soft tissue release products for the foot and ankle market, which consist of the AM EPF (plantar fascia release), AM UDIN (interdigital nerve decompression) and AM EGR (gastrocnemius release) Systems. These three systems address the decompression and soft tissue release procedures most commonly performed by foot and ankle surgeons.

Wright will continue to offer the AM foot and ankle tissue release systems through its U.S. sales force, as it has since last October, and expects to begin commercialization into certain international markets during 2009.

John Treace, VP of marketing for Wright's extremity products, said, "The A.M. Surgical product line is highly complementary to our industry leading line of reconstructive and biologic products for flatfoot corrective surgery. We are very pleased that we have obtained definitive control of this innovative technology platform."

Kardia Health Systems (Rochester, Minnesota) said it will expand its cardiology platforms with the acquisition of Freeland Systems (Westminster, Colorado), a provider of multi-modality medical imaging and reporting software solutions.

The move provides a more comprehensive line of high-performance products and services for cardiology, Kardia said.

Freeland Systems has been developing digital imaging technology for cardiac ultrasound since 1980 and has a worldwide installed base of more than 2,000 systems.

Kardia said that with this acquisition, it will be able to offer customers a complete web-based clinical, diagnostic and reporting solution for end-to-end management of multiple imaging modalities.

In other dealmaking news:

• PTS (Las Vegas) reported that has completed an executed letter of intent with ChengDu PuJian Medical Equipment Manufacturing (ChengDu, China) to pursue a 51% controlling shares exchange or purchase of the company.

PTS said it intends to bring in technical support to upgrade PuJian's current products as well to bring in more lines of medical products, including its GloveBox technologies, and sell through the well-established sales network that PuJian has established in the Chinese market. Further, PTS intends to bring addition capital to increase the overall revenue and financial positions of the company.

• Pediatrix Medical Group (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) reported it has acquired a large pediatric cardiology practice with principal offices in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida, that provides services to patients in communities in western and central Florida.

"We're looking forward to collaborating with other Pediatrix pediatric cardiologists in research and clinical quality programs," said Jorge McCormack, MD, who has served as CEO of Pediatric Cardiology Associates. "In addition, as our practice continues to grow we will now have the clinical and administrative support, including an electronic medical record system that will allow us to focus on our core competency of caring for the patient."

The acquisition was completed with cash, and the practice is expected to contribute to Pediatrix's earnings per share immediately.

• Research Corporation Technologies (RCT; Tucson) said it has granted SonoSite (Seattle) a non-exclusive license to patents owned by RCT that broadly cover ultrasound tissue harmonic imaging (THI).

RCT received U.S. patent No. 7,104,956, in September 2006; U.S. patent No. 7,004,905 in February 2006; and U.S. patent No. 6,206,833 in March 2001. Two other U.S. patents are pending.

In addition to SonoSite, Biosound Esaote, Acuson a Siemens company, Royal Philips Electronics and General Electric are licensees of the THI technology. RCT said it continues its efforts to license the technology broadly to the ultrasound industry. All licensing agreement terms are confidential.

• PharmaLinkFHI (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) reported the acquisition of Matrix Contract Research, a UK-based clinical research organization (CRO) and flexible clinical staffing company.

Both PharmaLink and Matrix have been providing contract research services for biotechnology, pharmaceutical and device companies for about 10 years. The two companies have partnered together on numerous occasions on global clinical trial implementation and management.

Matrix currently provides core clinical operation services including project management, clinical monitoring and regulatory. These will now be augmented by PharmaLink's U.S. clinical resources and global e-data management and biostatistical groups to provide clients with full service, turnkey, global research services.