Start-Up's monthly comprehensive review of emerging life science companies that have received venture funding during the month, including companies in the pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic and research instrumentation and reagent sectors.

A roundup of recent medtech strategic alliances, mergers & acquisitions and financings.

Continuous glucose monitoring for patients with diabetes presents an example of how an individual product has far less value than the integrated solution the technology enables. While continuous glucose monitoring offers significant value to a broad range of patients, the technology has still not fulfilled its market potential. Factors hindering more widespread adoption include inaccuracy, difficulty in using the systems, and low levels of patient adherence. But the greatest obstacle in CGM is the disconnect between CGM and treatment planning; CGM produces mounds of data that patients and even physicians don't know how to use. According to Health Care Advances, if this powerful dataset is optimized, shared, and applied, it could shift CGM from a niche product for a small number of type 1 diabetes patients into a standard of care for many metabolic diseases.

It's the end of a dynasty in the traditional market for self blood glucose testing--the test strips and hand-held monitors that patients have been using as the mainstay of their diabetes management. The four major companies, once differentiated players in a high growth market, have cut R&D and marketing budgets in the face of increasing commoditization. But a new era in continuous glucose monitoring has begun, and that sector is poised to grow in coming years, according to "US Markets for Diabetes Management Products," a report published in May 2009 by the Medtech Insight division of Elsevier Business Intelligence.