A Medical Device Daily
IntriCon (Arden Hills, Minnesota), a maker of body-worn medical and electronics devices, said that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Advanced Medical Electronics (AME; Minneapolis) to develop and manufacture new miniature, wireless, ultra-low-power bio-telemetry instruments.
Through this partnership AME and IntriCon will develop and manufacture wireless instruments including: a binaural hearing aid which will use wireless technology to enhance hearing by allowing hearing aids on both ears to coordinate their operations; a hearing aid companion microphone that will transmit companion voice signals to the wearer of a hearing aid, allowing vast improvement in speech intelligibility in noisy environments; a miniature wearable electroencephalograph (EEG) transmitter that will digitize EEG signals and transmit them in neuroscience research; and a wearable electromyograph (EMG) and inertial limb tracking systems for bio-mechanical research and clinical studies.
AME receives support from the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and will develop the bio-telemetry instruments. IntriCon will manufacture devices and supply them to third-party distributors. IntriCon also gains exclusive access to key AME technology and will be able to use this technology to develop additional bio-telemetry applications.
“Increasingly, the medical industry is looking for wireless, low-power capabilities in their devices,” said Mark Gorder, president/CEO of IntriCon.
AME is comprised of scientists and engineers who develop products from designs to manufacturing prototypes. Their specialties include embedded systems design, electronics design, software development, prototype build and system testing.
In other agreements news:
• North American Scientific (Chatsworth, California), which focuses on products for radiation therapy, reported that it has entered a new three-year distribution agreement with Carbon Medical Technologies (St. Paul, Minnesota), which makes carbon-coated medical implant devices, to sell gold and carbon markers used by radiation oncologists during prostate cancer procedures.
“This new agreement with Carbon Medical marks another positive milestone in our strategy to profitably expand our core brachytherapy business,” said John Rush, president/CEO of North American Scientific. “We estimate that the sales opportunity for localization markers utilized by the radiation oncology community represents a $50 million market. Since the end-users of these products are customers that we know well and currently sell other products to, we believe we will be able to immediately access this market and achieve incremental sales per call-point.”
Carbon Medical said that the biocompatibility of carbon makes it ideal for implant applications including its use as a tissue marker for biopsy sites and mapping sites for radiation therapy. In addition to tissue markers, Carbon Medical manufactures carbon implants for a number of applications including for the treatment of urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence and gastric reflux disease.