SAN FRANCISCO – The med-tech industry understands the power of scale. This fueled med-tech M&A last year, bringing it to new heights that outstripped its biopharma peers. And innovation is more and more the purview of med tech, with PMA approvals and early venture capital investment increasingly flourishing. That's according to the latest report released by consultancy Ernst & Young on the life sciences industry, timed to come out at during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, which started here yesterday.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has opted to cover the Freestyle Libre System from Abbott Laboratories for insulin-dependent diabetes patients. The system, which was just approved by the FDA in late September, is the only continuous glucose monitor (CGM) that does not require any user calibration, thereby eliminating the need for routine fingersticks. (See BioWorld MedTech, Sept. 29, 2016.)

Startup Corvia Medical Inc. reported positive data from its first randomized, sham-controlled trial for a transcatheter, structural implant designed to treat some heart failure patients with no effective treatment options to relieve their symptoms. The Tewksbury, Mass.-based company already started a pivotal trial for the device, known as the Interatrial Shunt Device (IASD), during the second half of 2017.

Luna DNA has raised $2 million in seed financing to launch the first genomic and medical research database undergirded by blockchain technology. It will incentivize individual participation via the distribution of cryptocurrency, the digital finance craze that's sweeping the globe which is often built on blockchain.