St. Jude Medical (St. Paul, Minnesota) reported its plans to unveil a new corporate identity to physician customers at the 88th annual meeting of the American Association of Thoracic Surgery (AATS; Beverly, Massachusetts) in San Diego over this past weekend, at EuroPCR in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday and at the Heart Rhythm Society's (HRS; Washington) annual scientific sessions in San Francisco Wednesday.

According to St. Jude, the new brand identity is designed to communicate the company's "mission to develop medical technology and services that put more control into the hands of those who treat cardiac, neurological and chronic pain patients, worldwide."

As a part of the brand identity, the new St. Jude Medical logo consists of eight small squares organized into a larger square, with an unaligned 9th square in the middle. The unaligned, center element represents the risks that are present in any medical procedure, while the organized exterior box is intended to represent the company's commitment to helping physicians control those risks, St. Jude explained in a company statement.

Amy Jo Meyer, a St. Jude spokeswoman, told Medical Device Daily that the new logo also takes a new color, green instead of blue, and includes a tagline below the company's name: "More control. Less risk."

"We haven't had a tagline for a number of years so the new tagline isn't really replacing a tagline," Meyer said.

"Customers count on us to help them attain the best possible patient outcomes by reducing as much risk as possible," said Daniel Starks, chairman/president/CEO of St. Jude. "This priority drives our innovation, our quality program, our clinical studies and our new product introductions. It has been a critical element of our success and makes us a different kind of partner for physicians."

Starks added: "Our new brand identity better symbolizes the intensity of our focus and our commitment to providing physicians with the medical technology and services they need to control risks wherever possible."

St. Jude noted developments it has made in recent years, including the Unity device platform, designed for remote patient monitoring of all new pacemakers, ICDs and CRT devices; the Durata 7 Fr high-voltage lead; irrigated RF ablation systems and "enhanced" cardiac imaging with the EnSite system and its EnSite Fusion Registration Module designed to give physicians highly detailed views of the heart's anatomy; neurostimulation products including Eon Mini, a spinal cord stimulator for chronic pain; surgical products for treating heart valve disease, including the Epic Stented Tissue Valve with Linx AC technology designed to enhance the valve's durability; and cardiology products, including the Angio-Seal vascular closure device.

As a part of the re-branding, the company's website, www.sjm.com, also is undergoing a redesign. Portions of the new site already are active, and St. Jude said it plans to continue to update other areas of the site over the coming months.

Another company — one that until now was actually called The Company (Las Vegas) — said it has changed its name to USA Advanced Tech "in an effort to more accurately reflect the emphasis that it is placing on its technical division after completion of the necessary administrative steps." The firm's website will change to www.USAAdvancedTech.com, it said.

USA Advanced Tech developed the MyScreenMD.com online medical technologies project. To assist with the project, William Blasé, MD, has been elected to serve on the company's medical/technical advisory board.

Blasé has had a practice emphasis on ophthalmology, a background in medical research, as well as administration and management issues of modern medical practice, according to USA Advanced Tech.