A Medical Device Daily

CardioTech International (Wilmington, Massachusetts), a developer of advanced materials and medical devices for the treatment of cardiovascular and other diseases, reported that its agreement to sell its Gish Biomedical (Rancho Santa Margarita, California) subsidiary in a stock transaction to Medos Medizintechnik (Stolberg, Germany) for a purchase price of about $7.5 million has closed. The deal was first disclosed last week (Medical Device Daily, July 6, 2007)

Of the purchase price, $1 million will be held in a one-year cash escrow to fund CardioTech's post-closing indemnification obligations to Medos, if any. After estimated transaction costs of $500,000 and the escrow funding, CardioTech expects to realize about $6 million in cash from the sale of Gish. The terms of the agreement provide that CardioTech retains all cash on Gish's balance sheet. The company will use the net cash proceeds to fund its growth initiatives focused on selling complex medical devices and licensing and selling its ChronoFlex family of specially formulated polymers to medical device manufacturers.

Medos is a developer of medical devices for cardiac surgery, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and ventricle assist devices (VAD).

"The acquisition of Gish represents an excellent opportunity to achieve a significant position in the U.S. market for disposable medical products used in cardiopulmonary surgery," said Dr. Thomas Theisen, chief sales officer of Medos. "Buying Gish also provides a solid platform for selectively introducing Medos' innovative products from the ECMO and VAD product lines to the U.S. market using the well respected Gish brand. Medos has the structure to capitalize on combining two strong R&D programs in the global medical device marketplace."

In February, CardioTech reported its plans to sell Gish with Adams saying at the time that Gish was "not a fit with CardioTech's strategic direction (MDD, Feb. 16, 2007).

CardioTech acquired Gish in March 2003 (MDD, March 10, 2003)

CardioTech develops products and materials for the treatment of cardiovascular, orthopedic, oncology, urology and other diseases.

Haemonetics (Braintree, Massachusetts), a global developer of blood management solutions, reported that it has acquired Infonale (West Chester, Pennsylvania) for $1.3 million in cash plus contingent consideration based upon future operating performance. Infonale is a developer of IT software and consulting services for optimizing hospital blood use and management.

At its recent May shareholders' meeting, Haemonetics reported its vision to bring to its blood collection and hospital customers a suite of blood management solutions that can reduce costs and improve clinical outcomes. Infonale's software, clinical database, and consulting services support this vision and complement Haemonetics' expanding portfolio into hospital surgical markets, it said.

Infonale provides hospitals with consulting services, backed by IT software, that track blood use data, including total charges by physician, patient length of stay comparisons, and diagnosis-related group (DRG) care patterns. The Infonale systems have shown that hospitals can improve patient outcomes and save costs by steering blood management policies and practices to evidence-based best practices. Haemonetics estimates this market at greater than $35 million.

Infonale adds IT and service expertise to the hospital markets and will help customers apply the appropriate resources to reduce blood costs and enhance patient care," said Brad Nutter, Haemonetics' president/CEO. "The acquisition is important to Haemonetics' ongoing transformation to a total blood management solutions company."

"With the Infonale acquisition, we've further strengthened our customer value proposition by providing information critical to optimizing blood use," added Tom Lawlor, president of Haemonetics' Patient Division.

Infonale's personnel and operations will remain in the Philadelphia area.

Haemonetics makes automated blood processing systems. These systems address important medical markets: surgical blood salvage, blood component collection, plasma collection, and blood component safety.

In other dealmaking news:

• Hanger Orthopedic Group (Bethesda, Maryland) reported that its wholly owned subsidiary, Southern Prosthetics Supply (SPS) has acquired certain assets of SureFit (Coral Springs, Florida), a manufacturer and distributor of therapeutic footwear for diabetic patients in the podiatric market.

SureFit produced revenue of $9.2 million for the 12 month period ended May 31, 2007. Hanger expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings on an annual basis, beginning Jan. 1, 2008. The acquisition will not impact fiscal 2007 earnings per diluted share due to the initial transition and integration period.

Hanger Orthopedic Group is a provider of orthotic and prosthetic patient care services.

• eGene (Irvine, California), a developer of a high-performance genetic analysis technology has been acquired by Qiagen North American Holdings (Valencia, California), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qiagen (Venlo, the Netherlands), one of the world's largest providers of sample and assay technologies for research in life sciences, applied testing and molecular diagnostics.

The $34 million cash and stock transaction was first disclosed back in April (MDD, April 16, 2007).

eGene developed the HDA-GT12 (high performance DNA analyzer for genotyping on 12 channels). The system analyzes the genetic fingerprints of living organisms. It performs fast DNA sample screening and high-resolution DNA fragment analysis (2-5bp). The system also analyzes the quality and quantity of RNA in gene expression market. The company sells cartridges that are specific to the type of analysis to be performed.

eGene focuses its core technologies of capillary electrophoresis, liquid handling and automation to develop and manufacture low-cost microfluidic, miniaturized digital analyzers systems, software and consumables for biological materials testing applications.