Edwards Lifesciences Corp. announced that it has agreed to acquire CardiAQ Valve Technologies Inc., a privately held company and developer of a transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR) system.

The U.S. House of Representatives July 10 passed its version of the 21st Century Cures Act (H.R. 6), designed to improve the U.S. healthcare innovation infrastructure. It was approved in a bipartisan vote of 344-77. The bill calls for providing resources to researchers working on next-generation medical devices and therapies. The legislation is aimed at addressing concerns that U.S. healthcare innovation is lagging behind the rest of the world due to large amounts of time-consuming and expensive regulatory oversight requirements that some feel are stifling innovation and the ability of startup companies to bring new products to market.

Wearable sensors are expected to play a big role in healthcare in the coming years, according to Verizon, as data from these devices are integrated into patient electronic medical records. They offer a big-picture view of a patient's health, beyond a yearly checkup. These devices are also expected to play a major role as healthcare organizations look for new ways to engage patients electronically to meet new federal health IT requirements.

St. Jude Medical, Inc. announced the launch of the ILUMIEN III clinical trial on June 30. ILUMIEN III is a prospective, international, randomized trial evaluating the clinical benefits of the company's optical coherence tomography (OCT) guidance during stent implantation. The study will compare OCT-guided stent implantation to implantation guided by intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) or angiography alone, diagnostic tools that offer less resolution than OCT during intravascular assessments and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).