• Celerus Diagnostics (Denver) reported the launch of a new system, the Wave, at the U.S. and Canada Academy of Pathology (USCAP; Augusta, Georgia) meeting. Capable of producing immunohistochemistry (IHC) results in 15 minutes, the company said that the Wave accelerates lab throughput, enabling intra-operative testing, and providing real-time pathology to requesting physicians. By repeatedly opening and closing slide segments, “Dynamic Replenishment Technology” creates kinetic “waves” which mixes and refreshes reagents. This recharging process continuously floods antigenic sites on the tissue with new waves of primary and secondary reagents, providing more efficient biding, accelerating reaction times, and enabling 15-minute IHC turnaround times. Celerus develops cancer diagnostics.

• Falcon Electric (Irwindale, California) introduced the new FH Series Biomedical & Laboratory-Grade uninterruptible power systems (UPS), specifically designed for the power requirements of biomedical and laboratory equipment. Designed to protect valuable tests and scientific processes, the FH Series 3 to 10kVA UPS assure a high level of power required by analyzers, sequencers, diagnostic equipment and gas chromatography/mass spectrometer instrumentation, as well as other testing and computerized processing equipment. The company says the FH Series’ on-line design provides “clean, tightly regulated power” that assures the highest level of protection for a wide spectrum of scientific equipment – from forensics and hospital biomedical labs to semiconductor production, robotics and uranium fuel processing.

• LifeNet Health (Virginia Beach, Virginia) introduced the VertiGraft VG1 Cervical Bio-implant, saying it is engineered for anterior cervical fusion surgery to treat neck pain and cervical pathologies. Bio-implant was co-developed by LifeNet Health and DePuy Spine (Raynham, Massachusetts), and is exclusively represented in the U.S. by DePuy Spine. Michael Hobert, LifeNet Health’s VertiGraft product manager, said, “Many surgery centers and hospitals do not have access to the ultra low-temperature freezers needed to store frozen allograft. VG1 Cervical is freeze-dried so it can be stored at room temperature giving ... convenient, room-temperature storage combined with the very high quality standards they demand.” LifeNet is an allograft bio-implant company.

• Medtronic (Minneapolis) reported the first human use of its investigational bifurcation stent. The new stent uses a Y-shaped design to match the anatomy of lesions that form at the junctions of coronary arteries. The BRANCH study is designed to assess the safety and deliverability of the Medtronic stent, which provides scaffolding to both branches of the bifurcation simultaneously without overlapping stents. Primary endpoints include cardiac death, myocardial infarction involving the target vessel, and clinically-driven target vessel revascularization 30 days post-implant. The bifurcation stent is intended to reduce the challenges associated with current 2-stent bifurcation techniques, requiring two overlapping stents, one for the main branch. Delivered over a dual-wire delivery system through a single catheter, the new stent leverages Medtronic’s balloon-tapering and -folding technology to minimize the delivery system’s profile.

• Sonic Innovations (Salt Lake City) has added hands-free automatic features to ion, its smallest hearing aid product line. The ion 400 is a micro behind-the-ear product (micro-BTE) with 24-channel digital signal processing, eight channels more than the ion 200. The ion 400 is an open-ear model, for those with mild to moderately severe hearing loss, equipped with voice alerts, a feature that replaces beep sequences. The voice alerts talk to the user, informing him or her when the hearing aid is changing programs (for example, when shifting to telephone mode) and when the battery is low. Users can select male or female voice alerts in one of eight different languages.