Claret Medical Inc. announced that it has entered into an agreement for up to $18 million in a Series B financing. The Series B round was led by Santé Ventures, a prominent healthcare-focused venture capital firm with $260 million in capital under management, with participation from Lightstone Ventures, a leading venture capital firm with $172 million under management.

The first researcher in the world to discover that aspirin prevents a first attack, Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., Dr.P.H., the first Sir Richard Doll professor and senior academic advisor to the dean in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University, has published a comprehensive review in the current issue of the journal Trends in Cardiovascular Medicine.

September 11, 2014 — Patients who rely on pacemakers and defibrillators to maintain a normal heart rhythm run the risk of serious health complications if they don’t fully understand how the devices work and what to do when they experience an irregular heartbeat. But a study from Columbia University School of Nursing, published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, found that 40 percent of patients with these devices had little to no ability to understand information about their cardiac health.

Growing awareness of the harmful effects of radiation exposure is driving the uptake of ultrasound systems, which are radiation free, less expensive, and more versatile than bigger modalities such as magnetic resonance (MR).

U.S.-based Medtronic said it would purchase Ireland-based Covidien for $42.9 billion, combining two of the world's biggest medical device makers and helping Medtronic savings with a headquarters change.

Only 25 percent of interviewed ambulatory providers report that meaningful use is having a positive impact on patient care.

September 10, 2014 — ResMed announced results from a study presented at the 2014 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Barcelona, Spain, looking at the use of the at-home, contactless, bedside SleepMinder device to diagnose sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), the most common co-morbidity in patients with heart failure (HF).