MPO’s Most-Read Stories This Week—Nov. 5

MPO website visitors remain fascinated by the concept of digital workforce training assistants. For the better part of a month, the magazine’s column on leveraging these assistants to improve manufacturing quality has been one of the most popular items; this week, it even outperformed medtech’s largest mega deal (to date).

Still, Johnson & Johnson’s $16.6 billion bid for Abiomed drove a considerable amount of online traffic (as do most M&A transactions). The purchase will expand J&J’s cardiovascular footprint, thanks to Abiomed’s first-in-kind product portfolio of coronary artery disease and heart failure treatments. Abiomed’s Impella heart pumps—which have exclusive FDA approvals for coronary artery disease patients needing high-risk PCI (percutaneous coronary intervention), treatment of AMI (acute myocardial infarction) cardiogenic shock, or right heart failure—complement J&J’s Biosense Webster electrophysiology business.

J&J’s big splurge wasn’t the only deal impacting page views this week. Medical Manufacturing Technologies attracted cybervisitors with its purchase of Confluent Medical Technologies’ equipment manufacturing business, which includes balloon forming equipment manufacturing as well as testing and catheter manufacturing capabilities. The businesses will be rebranded as Interface Catheter Solutions.

Product launches and approvals were popular with online guests this week as well. Roche garnered a respectable amount of clicks with the impending U.S. launch of its new cobas 5800 system. The compact, automated molecular laboratory instrument offers a flexible PCR testing solution to help diagnose infectious diseases. 5800 will bring a shared clinical menu of molecular diagnostics testing capabilities to smaller and mid-size labs, and flexibility to larger labs that may use cobas 6800/8800 or systems from other vendors. Its fully automated workflow encompasses sample transfer and preparation, amplification and detection, result calculation and delivery to the laboratory information system. Designed as one integrated instrument, the cobas 5800 System enables a walkaway time of up to eight hours.

Roche also earned FDA premarket approval for its cobas HIV-1 assay. The new system and assay will become available sometime this quarter.
 
Cochlear Limited drove its own share of traffic with the FDA approval of its Cochlear Nucleus 8 sound processor. Cochlear Limited touts the Nucleas 8 as the smallest and lightest behind-the-ear cochlear implant sound processor available, and the first cochlear implant sound processor that offers direct audio connectivity to consumer electronics using next-generation audio technology from Bluetooth.

1. Want to Supercharge Training? Look to Digital Assistants

2. Johnson & Johnson to Buy Abiomed for $16.6B

3. Roche to Launch cobas 5800 System in U.S.

4. FDA Approves Cochlear’s Nucleus 8 Sound Processor

5. MMT Acquires Confluent’s Medical Equipment Line