A Medical Device Daily

Sonic Innovations (Salt Lake City), a producer of digital hearing aids, reported that it has sold its auditory testing equipment division, Tympany (also Salt Lake City), to a private third party, Tympany Holdings.

Sonic did not disclose the details of the transaction, only saying that it expects "a small gain" on the sale.

Tympany, purchased by Sonic in December 2004 (Medical Device Daily, Dec. 8, 2004), makes the Otogram, an automated hearing testing device.

"Sonic's core competency is providing our customers with superior quality hearing aids and related services," said Sam Westover, president/CEO of Sonic. "The decision to sell the Tympany division is another step in our renewed focus to provide maximum shareholder value by concentrating on our core business and our commitment to enhance our customer relationships."

Since the acquisition, Sonic said that Tympany generated losses of $2.2 million in 2006 and $12.7 million in 2005. Earlier this month, Sonic reported that the Tympany division was available for sale, and treated Tympany as a discontinued operation in its consolidated operating results, and as "held-for-sale" in its consolidated balance sheet at Dec. 31, 2006.

In other dealmaking news:

  • ResCare (Louisville, Kentucky), a provider of residential, training, therapeutic, educational and support services for people with disabilities and special needs, reported that its Southern Home Care Services subsidiary has agreed to purchase the operating assets and business of Kelly Home Care Services (KHCS; Troy, Michigan), a subsidiary of Kelly Services. Terms were not disclosed.

KHCS operates in 18 states, providing in-home care to the elderly and people with disabilities.

"The acquisition of KHCS significantly expands our periodic in-home care services in the West and Southeast and moves us closer to our goal of establishing a national presence in the in-home care arena," said Ralph Gronefeld, ResCare president/CEO. This transaction brings total in-home care revenues for our Community Services Group to approximately $275 million, a third of which is private pay," he added.

  • WebVMC (Conyers, Georgia), a provider of virtual healthcare technology to manage health, and Health Hero Network (Redwood City, California), a developer of technologies for health management, including the Health Buddy System, reported entering into a commercial patent cross license agreement.

Under the terms of the royalty-bearing agreement, Health Hero Network has granted to WebVMC a worldwide license under select patent families of Health Hero Network to develop, manufacture and sell select products and services in the area of remote health monitoring and disease management. WebVMC has also granted a worldwide license for its select patent families to Health Hero Network. All the other terms of the agreement are confidential.

The Health Buddy System serves as the interface between patients at home and care providers, facilitating education and monitoring of patients with chronic conditions. The system includes monitoring technologies, clinical information databases, Internet-enabled decision support tools, health management programs and content development tools.

  • BioMed Realty Trust (San Diego) reported signing a long-term leases with Illumina (San Diego), a developer of tools for the large-scale analysis of genetic variation and function, for roughly 195,000 square feet of office and laboratory space at the company's Towne Centre Drive property in San Diego.

Under the new leases, Illumina will expand into a new 84,000 square foot state-of-the-art building to be constructed by BioMed at the property.

BioMed said it expects to complete construction in the 3Q08. Once completed and occupied, Illumina will lease the new building for a 15-year term. Additionally, Illumina extended its lease for the 109,270 square feet it currently occupies at Towne Centre Drive by nine years to 2023 to correspond with the new 15-year lease.

BioMed is a real estate investment trust providing real estate to the life science industry.