Mergers, Safety Top Medical Device Focus (Vns Message Board)

Title: Mergers, Safety Top Medical Device Focus

Birdbomb - January 12, 2006 09:52 AM (GMT)

Mergers, Safety Top Medical Device Focus

Monday January 9, 3:52 pm ET
By Wallace Witkowski, AP Business Writer
Medical Device Industry Mergers, Safety Awareness to Continue As Themes in 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Industry analysts predict the medical device sector will continue to place emphasis on more rigorous safety standards and mergers designed to jump-start growth in 2006.
Piper Jaffray medical device analyst Thom Gunderson said safety came to the fore in 2005 because of an event outside the immediate sector: the withdrawal of Merck & Co.'s top-selling arthritis drug Vioxx and the resulting liability trials.....

.....New safety strategies and mergers will play heavily in the growing neurostimulation device market, AG Edwards' Wald predicted. The analyst cited the recent acquisition of Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc. by St. Jude Medical Inc. as the heart device maker's play to take advantage of a field with "tremendous upside." Advanced Neuromodulation makes pacemaker-like devices that treat chronic pain. Another company, Cyberonics Inc., gained FDA approval in 2005 to use a stimulation device to treat drug-resistant depression.

Wald said that neurostimulation clinical trials have traditionally required far less data than trials for stents and other devices. But the analyst said that may change with Medtronic Inc.'s hiring of Richard Kuntz in September to head their neurostim business. Wald said that Medtronic plans to have Kuntz "up the ante" in the neurostim market by generating larger amounts of clinical trial data to support marketing efforts over the next year.

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Bernard - January 12, 2006 01:37 PM (GMT)

Richard Kuntz was previously the vice president of operations with Cyberonics. You would think they would have him legally bound with a no-compete contract.

howdydave - January 12, 2006 05:04 PM (GMT)

Howdy Bernard!

Naa...

Shouldn't be necessary if he was in Operations. Especially since it sounds like he's now on the Quality Assurance end of the business.

Now if he was in R&D that would be a different story...

Bernard - January 14, 2006 02:38 PM (GMT)

I've been informed that Medtronic's Dr. Richard P. Kuntz is not the same person as Cyberonic's former VP of Operations Richard Kuntz. Looks like I made an erroneous assumption. Goodness, how many Richard Kuntz's can there be working in such a highly specialized niche?

Birdbomb - January 14, 2006 04:55 PM (GMT)

I was curious about that myself. So I googled the name and came up with a couple of them. Small world, not enough names. :winkiss:

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