TORONTO – Novel. Unique. Revolutionary. Terms too often used to indiscriminately describe medical devices that have yet to prove their stuff. Not so at France’s Ministry of Health which takes care to deem winning devices under its Forfait Innovation (FI) program “truly innovative, not simply incremental developments.” Last week the FI awarded Vancouver, British Columbia’s Evasc Neurovascular Inc. €2.76 million (US$3.37 million) to test its CE-marked Eclips for treating intracranial bifurcation aneurysms during a 119-patient trial at 20 French sites in 2021.

TORONTO – Front Line Medical Technologies Inc. reported Health Canada approval for a device deemed the smallest for use in emergency situations when patients require hemodynamic support to maintain blood flow to the brain and heart. According to biomedical engineer, co-founder and Front Line CEO Asha Parekh, the Cobra-OS is the world’s smallest REBOA (Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta) device.

TORONTO – Puzzle Medical Devices Inc. has been granted a U.S. FDA breakthrough device designation for a transcatheter heart pump designed for fragile patients with few minimally invasive options for treating advanced heart failure.

TORONTO – Think of it. More than 14,000 facilities boasting 98% of the largest hospital chains across the U.S., two-thirds of skilled nursing facilities and hospice organizations and doctors’ offices. It’s that broad customer base Kent Imaging Inc. will have access to following its Jan. 26 agreement with medical software and analytics giant Net Health Inc., helping to expand the footprint of Kent Imaging’s Snapshot device for assessing non-healing wounds, notably those arising from diabetes.

TORONTO – Soundbite Medical Solutions Inc. has received Health Canada approval for a shock wave device that jackhammers its way through calcified, chronic total occlusions (CTO) in life-threatening critical limb ischemia (CLI), a severe form of peripheral artery disease. This comes after the Active Wire 0.014” was used for the first time in late January to successfully treat five patients.

TORONTO – Kardium Inc. has secured US$115 million in private money to accelerate commercial growth in Europe of a mapping and ablation system for atrial fibrillation (AF), and conduct a clinical study for FDA approval of the system. Led by Fidelity Management & Research Co. LLC, this funding tranche follows a US$40 million investment in Kardium in 2018 driven by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., which also invested this time around.

TORONTO – Startup CEOs may sometimes be forgiven a little exuberance on learning their technology has received the high sign from regulatory officials. So it was when the head of Monitio Intelligence Inc. Ben Su sifted through his email at his office in Coburg Ontario and saw the Health Canada logo at the top of the letter. “I was actually jumping up and down when I received that authorization letter. I was very excited,” Su said. Since then Su has been overseeing installation of an automated COVID-19 screening system.

TORONTO – Calgary-based Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc. is receiving CA$2.65 million (US$2.09 million) in funding from the Canadian government’s Western Diversification Program (WDP), which represents nearly half of the more than CA$5.5 million (US$3.35 million) investment made to four Alberta-based organizations and companies. Company CEO Greg Ogrodnick attributes this to Circle Cardiovascular’s position “as the world leader in cardiovascular imaging.”

TORONTO – Pointclickcare Technologies Inc. has followed up a series of private sector investments and purchases with its acquisition of Collective Medical Inc. and its real‐time notification platform for streamlining transitions from one stage of health care to another and reducing unnecessary length of stay and patient admissions. One of this country’s largest software companies, Pointclickcare said the US$500 million plus acquisition will pair its “rich, post‐acute data set” with Collective Medical’s network of more than 1,300 hospitals and other health care organizations across 39 states.