I have had may share of personal experiences with medical technology. Some were painful, some humiliating, and some downright scary. But looking at a humorous list from ViralNova (www.viralnova.com) of 15 vintage medical devices, I’m reminded of how far medical innovation has come. Suddenly the devices I’ve been poked and prodded with over the years don’t seem so bad. This is ViralNova’s list of crazy ancient medical devices, in reverse order: Rectal dilators: Without diving directly into the deep end of TMI, let’s just say I do have some medically-relevant experience with the modern version of these devices. As unpleasant...

HealthQuest Capital (HQC; Menlo Park, California), a new fund sponsored by Sofinnova Ventures, reported the closing of its debut fund at the hard cap of $110 million and in excess of the initial fund target of $50 million.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and med-tech have had a long-running history of working together on medical advances that not only meet needs of service members on the front lines, but also lead to immeasurable advancements in civilian medicine. One area of particular concern born over the past 12 years from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is traumatic brain injury (TBI).

A team of bioengineers led by David Kaplan at Tufts University (Boston), with funding from the NIH's National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), have created a 3-D brain-like tissue model that functions like and has structural features similar to tissue in the rat brain and that can be kept alive in the lab for more than two months.

Second Sight Medical Products (Sylmar, California), a company developing camera-based retinal implants designed to restore some vision to the blind, filed for its IPO on Tuesday. The company has set its sights on raising $32 million by offering 3.5 million shares at $9 a share.

Piramal Imaging (Berlin) reported that WVU Healthcare (Morgantown, West Virginia) is the first U.S. center to perform commercial scans using the company's Neuraceq, which just became available for commercial use on Aug. 1.