Small Bone Innovations (Morrisville, Pennsylvania) joins the list of smaller, yet well established med-tech firms to have assets acquired by a larger player in the space. This time out, Stryker (Kalamazoo, Michigan) is the acquiring company, picking up SBI's assets in an all-cash transaction for up to $375 million.

In 1997, Amit Goffer, an Israeli inventor, was severely paralyzed as a result of an ATV accident. Not content with his condition or the level of innovation available for paralyzed patients, Goffer, who is now a quadriplegic, began work on mobility devices. His work paid off as he eventually developed an exoskeleton to help paraplegic patients walk.

After a five-year contraction in employer healthcare spending growth, medical inflation in the U.S. is projected to rise to 6.8% in 2015, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC; New York) Health Research Institute (HRI). In its annual report, Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers, HRI projects that the stronger economy is now reaching the health sector, releasing a pent-up demand for care and services.

Researchers have developed a new technique that could give surgeons cheaper and more lightweight tools, such as goggles or hand-held devices, to identify tumors in real time in the operating room.

New data from Medtronic's (Minneapolis) Adaptive CRT trial show a 61% lower risk of atrial fibrillation (AF)-related problems in patients who receive a cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillator (CRT-D) with the Medtronic-exclusive AdaptivCRT algorithm compared to conventional biventricular pacing therapy. The data also indicate a 55% relative reduction in healthcare utilizations (HCUs, including hospitalizations, emergency department or clinic visits) when patients have devices with AdaptivCRT.