Source: Boston.com

Click here.

Source: Mass High Tech et Phase Forward Website

Phase Forward, a Waltham-based provider of data management software for clinical trials and drug safety, has acquired Maaguzi, a privately held provider of Web-based, electronic patient reported outcomes (ePRO), for $11 million in cash. Maaguzi has operations in Indianapolis and Morrisville, N.C. Phase Forward said that the acquisition extends its integrated clinical research suite and marks the company's entry into the increasingly important ePRO and observational studies industry sectors.

Clinical studies are progressively incorporating data reported directly by patients, and electronic methods of collecting patient input offer superior quality and help to ensure higher levels of regulatory compliance than traditional paper diary methods. While this market was initially addressed with PDA-based solutions, Maaguzi's technology is pioneering the next generation of ePRO solutions that leverage Web-based interfaces, providing greater cost-effectiveness and the ability to address a broader range of ePRO market requirements.  To read more, click here.

Source: Physics Today

Thanks to Federico for this article where you will find the budget for each government entity.

We uploaded the article: http://www.hubtech21.com/Default.aspx?app=LeadgenDownload&shortpath=docs%2fPhysicsToday_200907_STIMULUS.pdf

Source: Mass High Tech

From HIPPA to SOX to PCI DSS - and on and on - the growing canon of compliance regulations can overwhelm businesses simply trying to keep up. What makes compliance difficult is the fact that not only do applicable regulations vary by industry - for instance, Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) for health-care providers or PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for companies that accept and process credit card payments - but the actual tasks integral to ensuring compliance and accountability are spread across multiple departments.

Yet, the penalties for not complying are so great that extreme diligence is necessary to meet applicable standards and execute appropriate management practices. As a result, companies must find ways to not only identify and decipher the intricacies of the specific regulations applicable to their operations but also develop strategies to manage the complex internal processes necessary to ensure compliance and avoid stiff penalties.
To read more, click here.

Source: MAss High Tech

The U.S. has the largest venture capital pool in the world, yet 2009 is an extremely challenging year for emerging life sciences companies to raise venture capital. Why? Many VC firms can't raise their own funding from their usual sources of capital, pension plans and university endowments, which are reeling from their own heavy losses in the public markets. 

Because the VCs' existing portfolio companies can't raise money in IPOs, have few M&A opportunities, are unable to obtain bank financing and are facing sharply declining markets, VCs are have to use much more of their available money to finance these portfolio companies, leaving less money for new investments.

To read more, click here.

Source: MAss High Tech

To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

While the burgeoning gaming industry in New England has raided all the headlines lately, the boomlet in talent it has created has been a boon to some of the other industry areas focused on 3-D design and animation.

A small but steadily growing cluster of companies in New England has been working for years in areas such as film special effects, architectural rendering and animation, and even naval architecture.

"Gaming is taking off, and that's what people are doing. They are trying to get into that business," said Stefan Vittori, the founder of Kittery, Maine-based 3-D studio Tangram 3DS LLC.

For Tangram, which specializes in 3-D rendering for architectural designs and 3-D animations for large development projects, the attention that gaming is getting these days is spilling over into its own market. And, while there are specific skills associated with creating 3-D designs for architects, Vittori said, having access to new talent that has already been trained on Autodesk Inc.'s 3DStudio Max is a big step forward.

To read more, click here.

Source: R&D magazine

Ytterbium was discovered in 1878, but until it recently became useful in atomic clocks, the soft metal rarely made the news. Now ytterbium has a new claim to scientific fame. Measurements with ytterbium-174, an isotope with 70 protons and 104 neutrons, have shown the largest effects of parity violation in an atom ever observed-a hundred times larger than the most precise measurements made so far, with the element cesium.

"Parity" assumes that, on the atomic scale, nature behaves identically when left and right are reversed: interactions that are otherwise the same but whose spatial configurations are switched, as if seen in a mirror, ought to be indistinguishable. Sounds like common sense but, remarkably, this isn't always the case.

"It's the weak force that allows parity violation," says Dmitry Budker, who led the research team. Budker is a member of the Nuclear Science Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley.

To read more, click here.

Source: Physics Today

An American Institute of Physics study completed in 2008 documents the ways in which the corporate physicist's work has changed in the past 40 years. Here are its major findings. R. Joseph Anderson and Orville R. Butler July 2009, page 36

Figure 1

Source: Physics Today

New high-resolution data and images, derived from the light gathered by separated telescopes, are revealing that stars are not always as they seem.

Each time a piece of observational phase space is opened up, new discoveries are made and existing theories are challenged. In astronomy, therefore, there is a constant push to build instruments capable of greater sensitivity and higher spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution. The technique of interferometry has for many decades provided high angular resolution at radio wavelengths (see the article by Kenneth Kellermann and David Heeschen, PHYSICS TODAY, April 1991, page 40), and astronomers have been following a similar path at near­IR (1-11 μm) and visible (0.5-0.8 μm) wavelengths.

To read more, click here.

Venture capital investment activity rebounded to $3.7 billion in the second quarter, but the gains are only enough to put the sector on track to match annual levels from more than 12 years ago.

While the change in direction is reassuring, it may be a dead-cat bounce after the first-quarter’s precipitous 40 percent drop in venture capital activity. We argued then that the goldrush era of technology prospecting may be over, as Silicon Valley has to hunker down and build businesses with more modest returns. Compared to one year ago, investment has plummeted 51 percent, according to the Moneytree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association.

Indeed, investment in Internet-specific companies fell 15 percent, and software company funding was virtually unchanged from the first quarter at $644 million.

Instead, biotechnology and medical device companies have piqued investor attention, attracting the highest share of funding with $1.5 billion. That’s 47 percent more than last quarter. Cleantech investment also rebounded, with a 15 percent gain matching the overall average increase. Read More -->

Source: Mass High Tech

With the stock market entering a modest equilibrium, many emerging growth companies, whether venture-backed or privately funded, are reconsidering financing strategies and looking at their next steps. Yet, bank financing remains elusive, and many venture capitalists, particularly those previously funding Series A and B rounds, seem to be focused on stabilizing their existing portfolio companies or investing in later stage enterprises. So what's a technology company to do if it needs financing and hopes to be sold or go public within two years? Consider the following:

Doing more with less. Financings are still getting done, even in this environment. The key is adjusting financing strategy to what is available - and from whom - in the near term. For example, a planned venture round for $7 million may need to be scaled back to a $3 million targeted angel investor offering. Angel investors, both in groups and as individuals, ­still are reviewing business plans from local companies in compelling industries or with demonstrable near-term financial success, such as achievement of break-even cash flow. Any management team that is formulating plans and presentations for institutional investors should have a parallel plan to reach out to angels.

To read more, click here.

Source: optics.org

Networking between universities, start-ups and established industry vendors is a key driver of growth within the optics industry. Bob Breault tells OLE about the wide-ranging benefits of optics clusters.

Bob Breault

Bob Breault is president of Breault Research Organization (BRO), a Tucson, Arizona-based company that specializes in optical design software. Alongside the day job, he also heads up the Arizona Optics Industry Association (AOIA), an umbrella group that supports more than 300 optics-related companies in the Arizona photonics cluster. In the past decade, the cluster has grown tenfold, with member companies generating $2.3bn (€1.7bn) in aggregate revenues in 2006 and employing some 25,000 people.

To read more, click here. 

Source: Mass High Tech

There's nothing signaling a return to boom times, but there's also no freefall, as confidence levels among New England tech companies remain down versus a year ago but show signs of stability.
 
In Mass High Tech's quarterly Pulse of Technology survey, 47.2 percent of 798 respondents from regional tech companies said in the second quarter that they are "very confident" or "moderately confident" about growth in their sector. While the number of managers saying they are20"very confident" is down from 25.3 percent in the second quarter of 2008 to 20.5 percent this time, the combined totals for the two top confidence levels are up slightly against the year-ago period and the first quarter of this year.
To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Boston-area universities are fond of tallying their contribution to the national economy in revenue dollars earned by startups their graduates have founded. It's a pity BBN Technologies Inc. has never done the same: Since its founding in 1948, the Cambridge-based government contractor has been a birthing ground for at least 100 companies, based on an informal count provided by current and former employees.

Most recently, innovators who formerly walked the halls of BBN are now staffing startups in the fast-emerging video game development cluster, working on cutting-edge applications for an eclectic set of technologies pioneered in government-sponsored research.

"In some ways, (BBN) provides a better Internet incubator than some Internet incubators do," said Steve An, CTO at Cambridge-based LocaModa Inc., which makes casual games and chat applications for global participants. At BBN, in the 1980s, he worked on the routing protocols that connected Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet. Applying those technologies to let millions play games and chat is "not as far a stretch as you might think," he said. To read more, click here.

Source: Feedblitz

Next week is the Symposium on Bills Affecting Employee Non-Compete Agreements at the Boston Bar Association. (I'll be there.) State Rep. Will Brownsberger will be talking about the latest version of the bill on non-competes -- essentially, his proposal to eliminate non-competes entirely has been combined with another State Rep's proposal to simply limit the way they are used.

Here's his summary of what's in the new, combined bill (you can find the complete language of the bill here.):

Overview of current working draft of non-compete legislation
(combining House 1794 and House 1799, bills filed by Rep's. Brownsberger and Ehrlich)

Motivation:

To protect employees from unfair non-competition agreements while preserving protections for legitimate risks to business assets.

Basic Approach:

Prohibit non-compete agreements for lower level employees; for others, allow non-compete agreements but clarify guidelines and give employers strong incentives to require only moderate and reasonable agreements.

To read more, click here.

Source: BE Etats-Unis

L'information est de taille mais elle est passée presque inaperçue aux Etats-Unis et à fortiori en Europe. C'est le 31 juillet 2009 que devaient expirer les deux principaux programmes de soutien à l'innovation concernant les quelque 6 millions de PMI-PME américaines, le SBIR et STTR [1]. Le premier, et le principal, concerne l'innovation, le second les transferts de technologies. Depuis son introduction en 1982, les deux programmes ont permis de financer 100.000 projets pour une valeur de 24 milliards de dollars. D'une façon générale, et les rapports d'évaluation sont unanimes sur leurs qualité et retombées, les deux programmes ont contribué à faire progresser le niveau technologique et la compétitivité des Etats-Unis. Grâce à ces programmes, 85.000 brevets ont été produits et l'on estime à plusieurs millions de postes hautement qualifiés le volume d'emplois créés.

L'argent fédéral semble également utilisé à bon escient puisque les budgets de ces programmes représentent à peine 4% des fonds fédéraux pour la recherche alors que les PMI-PME emploient aux Etats-Unis près de 40% des chercheurs et ingénieurs et qu'elles génèrent 13 à 14 fois plus de brevets par employé que les grandes entreprises.
To read more, click here.

Source: Reuters

Europe's biggest biotech company Actelion Ltd (ATLN.VX) said an experimental new drug against a heart and lung condition showed promising results in a mid-stage trial and that it will continue its development.

Actelion is developing a clutch of new medicines as it tries to cut dependence on top seller Tracleer, which also treats pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and rakes in more than $1 billion a year.

The new drug -- a so-called PGI2 receptor agonist which mimics the actions of a molecule called prostacyclin, helping to prevent constriction of blood vessels -- met its main target and was well tolerated in the Phase IIa trial with 43 patients, the group said.

"The data looks as good as Phase IIa data can at this stage," said Kepler Capital Markets analyst Tero Weckroth.

"We keep the drug outside the model until seeing details of the Phase IIa study. But it looks increasingly likely that there will be a terminal value for the PAH franchise beyond Tracleer," Weckroth said.(more)

Source: Wall Street Journal

For the second time in a week dominated by quarterly reports, U.S. small-capitalization stocks surged broadly Wednesday.

So far this week, behemoths in the banking and technology industries have posted robust quarterly reports. While these reports do little to help small-cap indexes directly, they have given investors renewed confidence in corporations' ability to withstand a continued weak economic picture.(...) Among smaller companies in the chip sector, Rudolph Technologies jumped $1.30, or 22% to $7.27.

Source: Mass High Tech

New England is like the dysfunctional family that isn't satisfied with merely tolerating one another: These relatives insist on the behind-the-back maneuvering that spawns, "Well, she started it..."

Some in the tech sector, including some economic development leaders in our Inside Report this week, encourage the six states to be more like kissing cousins. Nice thought, and a great goal. But even if we can't go that far, do we have to go in the opposite direction, family feud, and spend valuable tax dollars trying to steal firms from neighboring states? We're not talking about a North Carolina-New England rivalry here. It's Nashua against Lowell, Hartford against Springfield, Boston against Cambridge, everyone against Boston.

There is a growing body of research to show that the efforts to steal companies from other states, in terms of marketing and tax breaks, too often provide no significant benefit for the winning side. Long-term tax revenue doesn't offset short-term incentives, and jobs or downstream employee spending don't match expectations. Worst case: The company takes the deal, and eventually tanks. Spending millions in marketing and incentives to move a couple of hundred jobs 20 miles for a few short years simply isn't the smart way to drive an economy.

Agencies and organizations that focus on recruiting across state lines would be of greater service if they provided a nurturing environment for local companies to grow, to spawn spinoffs and to make sure their executives are ready to say no when distant states come calling. To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Asked whether there is a silver lining to the recession, none of the New England economic development professionals interviewed last week is jumping for joy. But almost to a person, they believe the recession has bottomed out, and they shared some of the positive signs they're seeing in their states.

Maine
Catherine S. Renault, director, Office of Innovation,
Department of Economic and Community Development

Maine is fortunate, says Catherine Renault, that "so much of our economy came out of our natural resources, and now, is going back to those natural resources. We were late to IT and biotechnology, and we really don't do much nanotechnology; but this is a fourth wave of innovation, and we're positioned to take advantage of it as a world leader.

"We have a superior wind resource in the Gulf of Maine, and we have a lot of people here who already know how to integrate steel deposits into a marine environment."

So Maine giants such as Bath Iron Works, and contractors Reed and Reed Inc., and Cianbro Corp. are finding hefty contracts within the state and worldwide. A second project through the University of Maine is treating pulp-and-paper mills as biorefineries, to extract bi-products like cellulosic ethanol. To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Phase Forward has paid $10 million in cash to buy the Interactive Voice & Web Response Services business of Princeton, N.J.-based drug developer Covance Inc. (NYSE: CVD). The deal includes a multiyear marketing agreement for the Waltham-based data management solutions provider for clinical trials and drug safety.

The marketing deal calls for Covance clients to gain access to Phase Forward's InForm electronic data capture system and Clarix interactive response technology system. Phase Forward (Nasdaq: PFWD) officials said the business buyout and marketing agreement will be finalized by the end of August. Covance chairman and CEO Joe Herring identified in a press release that Phase Forward is the company's "preferred provider of EDC software for clinical trials."

Phase Forward has been on a deal-making spree lately. Last month, the company signed a licensing, support and hosting services deal with GlaxoSmithKline, centered around the InForm Integrated Trial Management Solution.  To read more, click here.

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - Venture capital critical to biotechnology companies would dry up if biologic medicines did not have extended protection from generic competition, the head of one company told Congress on Tuesday..

Without the extended protection, "the volume of that investment activity will decline substantially," Jack Lasersohn, head of the venture capital firm Vertical Group, told a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee(more)

Source: Technology Review

A runner with a torn tendon has reason to envy a racehorse with the same affliction: horses have treatment options not available to human patients--most notably, injections of adult stem cells that appear to spur healing in these animals with shorter recovery time than surgical treatments. Now the same stem-cell therapies used routinely in competitive horses and increasingly in dogs are beginning to make their way into human testing.

Tendon repair: These ultrasound images show the tendon in a horse’s front leg. An area of damage (circle in yellow, top) has healed (bottom) after the injection of stem cells derived from the animal’s fat. Credit: Vet-Stem

Human stem-cell treatments are advancing quickly in many areas: therapies using adult stem cells derived from both fat and bone marrow are currently being tested for a variety of ailments, including Crohn's disease, heart disease, and diabetes. (Bone-marrow-derived stem-cell transplants have been used for decades to treat blood diseases and some cancers.) But when it comes to orthopedic injuries, such as torn tendons, fractures, and degenerating cartilage, veterinary medicine has outpaced human care.

Veterinarians and private companies have aggressively tested new treatments for the most common injuries in racehorses, in large part because these animals are so valuable and can be so severely incapacitated by these wounds. "Soft-tissue injury is the number-one injury competitive horses will suffer and can end a thoroughbred horse's career," says Sean Owens, a veterinarian and director of the Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, at the University of California, Davis. Veterinary medicine also has much more lax regulations when it comes to treating animals with experimental therapies, allowing these treatments to move rapidly into routine clinical use without clinical trials. "Regulatory oversight of veterinary medicine is minimal," says Owens. "For the most part, the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] and the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] have not waded into the regulatory arena for us."(more)

Source: The Economist

MOST people accept that death and taxes are inevitable. But that doesn’t mean you should not try to postpone them. A good accountant can help with the latter, but the usual prescription for the former is a way of life that avoids excess.

That advice might be even truer than many of its proponents realise, for it has long been known that restricting the diets of several species of laboratory animal seems to slow down the process of ageing. This is a question not just of avoiding obesity, but of reducing an individual’s intake of calories to a point significantly below normal consumption—almost, but not quite, to the point of malnutrition. At the same time, some drugs are also known to have anti-ageing properties—again, in “lower” animals. It is therefore good news for potential Methuselahs that both these approaches have now been brought closer, phylogenetically speaking, to humanity.(more)

Source: newsletter HGH

HGH, expert in infrared optronics for over 25 years, received the "Product of The Year 2008" award from the prestigious US magazine "NASA Tech Briefs".

This prize was awarded to HGH for their innovative Vigiscan (IR Revolution 360) panoramic infrared camera, which enables surveillance of large areas. Indeed, the performance of this unique system enables simultaneously visualization & detection of all intrusions over 360°.

Source: newsletter HGH

Accompanied by Michel Aubouin, General Secretary of Essonne's Prefecture, and by Gérad Huot, President of Essonne's Chamber of Commerce, Ms IDRAC visited the company facilities and overviewed the innovative systems developed by HGH. According to her, "HGH is a real technology champion, innovative, and with a huge potential".

The Minister offered HGH the possibility to join her and her staff on their next visit to Latin America in order to enhance export sales which, for HGH, represent already some 80% of annual turn-over.

Source: ILS July

Laser opportunities in the solar industry, p.11-13

To read July's magazine, click here.

Thank you to all our partners and friends who showed up last Wednesday in spite of the heavy rain!

We were delighted to share some delicious cheese and wine with all of you. Special thanks  to : Tim and Geoff from CIC, Guy and Dorothy from Kayentis, Christelle and Christophe from PX'Therapeutics, all the team of the French Consulate, Geraldine from YEI, Jim Collins, etc.

The event was organized by Christophe and Joubin, who did a fantastic job!

Here are a few pictures....taken early in the evening:

Source: Laser Focus World website

To view this video, click here.

And do you remember these guys in 2008? Check this video out! Amplitude hadnt told us about this video....

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Pfizer terminated its plan to open a biotech research facility at Mission Bay in San Francisco after deciding to retain its 100 Bay Area workers at startup firm Rinat Neuroscience, which it acquired in 2006, a company spokeswoman said. Mayor Gavin Newsom is disappointed with the drugmaker's decision but remains optimistic that Mission Bay will become a hub for biotech firms, said Nathan Ballard, the mayor's press secretary. (...)

Despite Pfizer's pullout, Ballard said, a dozen biotech companies already have located near Mission Bay, including the Sirna division of Merck, another large drug company.

"As an observer of that project over the last 15 years, I think Mission Bay is finally reaching critical mass," said Rodney Ferguson with the venture investment firm Panorama Capital.

To read more, click here.

Source: Laser Focus World July 2009

Bigger is better for ground telescopes: super-giant will reach 24 to 42 m, p.39 to 43

Quantum dots enable integrated terahertz imager, p.45 to 47

Uses proliferate for high energy picosecond UV lasers, p.48-50

To read these articles, click here.

Source:optoIQ

OTTAWA - Helicopter avionics specialists at two Canadian aerospace companies are blending lidar technology and computer simulation to create a virtual environment for aircraft avionics to enable pilots to land safely in zero-visibility dust, smoke, and fog-especially at night.

Lidar stands for light direction and ranging, and uses infrared laser beams as primary sensors for image capture of the surrounding area. This technology also is referred to as ladar, which is short for laser radar. Neptec's military avionics technology is called OPAL, which is short for obscurant-penetrating autosynchronous lidar.

 To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Venture capital investment in clean technology and renewable energy rebounded in the second quarter after sharp declines in the previous two quarters, according to a report by The Cleantech Group and Deloitte.

Global cleantech investments totalled $1.2 billion across 94 companies, a 12 percent increase over the first quarter. The increase was driven by interest in alternative vehicles, which grabbed $236 million, and advanced batteries, which received $165 million.

Watertown-based lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems Inc. landed a $100 million investment led by General Electric Co. in April.

The report's authors say cleantech companies will continue to be buttressed by investments by the federal government and electric power companies to complement venture capital investment.

"New investment tax credits are playing a major role in making new solar thermal, solar PV and wind projects more economically viable for utilities, which are bringing their access to capital to the sector," said Scott Smith, U.S. leader of Deloitte's cleantech practice, in a statement.
To read more, click here.

Source:R&D magazine

A better optical trap has been built using an existing innovation: a hollow-core optical waveguide that directs light beams through a liquid-filled channel on a chip. To trap particles, two laser beams at opposite ends of a channel exert equal force on particles in the channel. Changes in relative power of the beams lets researchers move bacteria, viruses, and other particles at will, and even push them into a corner to increase concentration.

"Ultimately, it could have applications for rapid detection of bacteria and viruses in hospitals, for cell sorting in research labs, and for process monitoring in chemical engineering," said Holger Schmidt, professor of electrical engineering and director of the W. M. Keck Center for Nanoscale Optofluidics at UCSC.

To read more, click here.

Source: Information Week

Dr. David Blumenthal -- a long-time Boston physician, official at Partners Healthcare System, and Harvard professor, was named national health IT coordinator to lead President Obama's health IT strategy in March.

Topping Blumenthal's list of duties is making recommendations to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services about the fine details of the federal government's $20 billion-plus stimulus program aimed at incentivizing U.S. doctors and hospitals to use "qualified" electronic health systems in "meaningful" ways.

Blumenthal spoke Wednesday with InformationWeek senior writer Marianne Kolbasuk McGee about progress being made on the mega-billion-dollar incentive program that launches in 2011.

InformationWeek: You've said the final "meaningful use" definition isn't likely to be published until mid 2010. Is there any flexibility in adjusting the schedule of rewards in case healthcare providers can't accomplish everything they need to do to meet the "meaningful use" requirements? It seems like there won't be much time for providers to meet all requirements for the 2011 incentives once the meaningful use rule is published.

Blumenthal: The law is clear. It specifies how much money is available each year and for what. We will try our best to get this out as soon as possible. Once the proposed rule is public, I think providers will have some sense of direction. But for those who want to plan ahead, there will be some tea leaves to read.

InformationWeek: Will the incentives be enough to get healthcare providers going to meet these requirements?

Blumenthal: I think there is a growing acceptance of the inevitability of electronic health systems to exchange information. No question the pace of adoption for meaningful use will increase at a steady pace over the next 5 or 10 years. The incentives will be sufficient to get most providers to adopt, and not sufficient for others. They will either move along at a slower pace or decide at some point that they don't have the wherewithal to do this. I suspect they will be minority -- small groups of physicians and hospitals that will continue to practice the way they always have. To read more, click here.

Source: Medical Device Industry News

Administration's Health Care Goals at Elsevier Business Intelligence's 'IN3 East' Partnership/Investment Meeting for Medtech Execs

Medical Technology VCs Are Optimistic About Obama Administration's Health Care Goals at Elsevier Business Intelligence's 'IN3 East' Partnership/Investment Meeting for Medtech Execs

(http://www.windhover.com/mti/template.asp?pagein3_east09&event D1 6)

Elsevier Business Intelligence announced today that leading venture capitalists who participated in the keynote panel discussion which kicked-off its annual 'IN3 East' (http://www.windhover.com/mti/template.asp?pagein3_east09&event D1 6) strategic partnership and investment meeting are optimistic about the effect that the Obama administration's health care goals will likely have on the medtech industry. "Generally speaking, medical devices as a category are not likely to be targeted... and it is likely to be part of the solution, in my view," said Paul LaViolette, Venture Partner, SV Life Sciences(TM) (http://www.svlsa.com/) . "The less-invasive revolution is going to continue for a long time. It is a means by which to provide cost-effective care. There are huge categories of disease that can be positively affected by this. Large companies are not going to innovate, generally speaking. They are still going to need venture-backed vitality to drive the engine of growth in devices. So I think we need a little bit of stabilization in the concern about what the health care system (reform) will entail. I think... devices as a general space will be healthy, and that the venture-backed model is going to be absolutely requisite in that (paradigm)." To read more, click here.