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The acquisition will be financed through a combination of Sonic’s shares and cash. Credit: Piotr Swat / Shutterstock

Sonic Healthcare has signed binding agreements to acquire Germany-based Laboratory Group Dr Kramer & Colleagues (LADR), for an enterprise value of €423m ($446.9m).

The acquisition will be financed through a combination of Sonic’s shares and cash, with the latter being funded from existing resources.

This strategic move is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings per share, with significant accretion and return on invested capital anticipated within three years.

The return on invested capital is anticipated to significantly exceed Sonic’s cost of capital, with expectations of an 11% per annum return post-three years.

Synergies are expected to be fully realised within this period, enhancing multiple operational areas such as procurement, specialised testing, equipment maintenance, laboratory overlaps,  supply and distribution of medical consumables, equipment maintenance and logistics.

US-based Neuralink has received approval to launch a new feasibility trial studying its brain implant linked with an assistive robotic arm.

Founded by Elon Musk, the company said that the trial, named CONVOY, will operate with cross-enrolling from the company’s ongoing PRIME study (NCT06429735), which is being completed in the US.

Neuralink implanted the first patient with its brain-computer interface (BCI) in January this year, after an investigational device exemption (IDE) was awarded by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May 2023. The BCI is designed to give paralysed people the ability to control external secondary devices through thoughts. They work by taking brain signals and translating them into commands, which are then relayed to a secondary, external device that carries out a specific function.

Philips is expanding its collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer its HealthSuite diagnostics portfolio on the cloud.

The Netherlands-based medtech states that the collaboration aims to unify diagnostic workflows, improve access to critical insights, and drive improved outcomes across clinical specialities.

Having already transitioned more than 150 healthcare sites across North America and Latin America to Philips HealthSuite Imaging on AWS, Philips said the expanded AWS collaboration is now focused on accelerating the migration of health systems to the cloud in Europe, including customer cloud migrations on the continent.

With its portfolio situated on the cloud, the company said it will offer a unified view of patient data from diverse diagnostic sources, including radiology images, digital pathology slides, and other clinical records, to support care team collaboration and optimise workflows.

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved Tauvid (flortaucipir), a diagnostic imaging agent developed by Eli Lilly subsidiary Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, to identify whether patients with memory problems may have Alzheimer’s disease.

The agent is designed for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of the brain to estimate the density and distribution of aggregated tau neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), a primary marker of Alzheimer’s disease.

Tauvid received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020. The MHRA said the approval was based on a performance review study that found that flortaucipir PET scans had a sensitivity of 92% in the ability to detect significant buildup of abnormal tau protein in the brain. 

Baxter has issued a correction for its AK 98 haemodialysis machines, with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifying the recall as Class I.

Class I indicates the agency’s most serious designation for a recall, meaning continued use of the products, without actions being taken, could cause serious injury or death. Although it is classified as type I recall, it does not involve removing devices only the correction of AK 98 haemodialysis machines with product code – 955607.

Baxter noted that the correction was based on “recent recalls by other manufacturers” related to the potential risk of exposure to non-dioxin-like (NDL) polychlorinated biphenyl acids (PCBAs) and NDL polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) when using certain peritoneal dialysis and haemodialysis devices.