The med-tech industry was ripe with rumors Thursday after a report in the Financial Times, quoting unnamed sources "familiar with the matter," suggested that Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Ill.) was preparing a $25 billion bid for St. Jude Medical (St. Paul, Minn.). Abbott promptly denied the speculation in a company statement.

One of the biggest challenges neurologists face when managing patients with Parkinson's disease is making treatment decisions based on relatively brief patient interactions and subjective patient reports about their symptoms. A new wearable device developed by neurologists in Australia has the potential to inject some objectivity into those treatment decisions.

Driven by "very strong demand" for its newest neuromodulation generator, Cyberonics (Houston, Texas) achieved record worldwide sales of $81 million for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2016, a constant currency growth of about 14% over the same quarter last year.

Genomics represents a significant opportunity to unlock information that is not widely accessible to consumers, according to Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN)(San Diego) CEO Jay Flatley, whose company is one of the top providers of gene-sequencing technology. The company has teamed up with New York-based private equity firm Warburg Pincus and venture capital firm Sutter Hill ventures to launch a consumer-focused genomics company called Helix (San Francisco), investing $100 million in seed money.

Few topics ruffle feathers in the medical device industry as much as those related to the U.S. regulatory system. A common complaint in the industry is that it takes a lot of time and money to bring a new device to market in the U.S., especially when a premarket approval (PMA) is required. But a recent study by a group of researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine (New Haven, Conn.) suggested that the clinical evidence supporting many FDA-approved high-risk devices is relatively thin. The study is published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).