Brief summaries of recent medtech market and industry developments. This month we cover J&J's and Medtronic's moves in a-fib, Abbott's acquisition of AMO, Northstar Neuroscience's demise and Invatec's European launch of its drug-eluting balloon. Plus a snapshot of ambulatory surgery in the US.

The ophthalmic industry has traditionally stood alone, with its own device and pharmaceutical companies selling products marketed to specialists. So the announcement on January 12 that diversified giant Abbott Laboratories would acquire Advanced Medical Optics was initially astonishing, as was the hefty premium that Abbott offered. Perhaps Abbott was willing to pay more than it otherwise would have because of the recent divestiture of its Abbott Spine business. In AMO, Abbott is getting a business that almost can't fail to grow by double digits (despite recent economic stresses on the laser vision correction market) because of the demographics of the ophthalmology industry and improving margins on products like intraocular lenses, which serve the burgeoning elderly cataract patient population.

These days, medtech investors need to be much more selective about how they spend their capital. In pursuit of steady streams of early-stage opportunities with a high likelihood of success, VCs are establishing closer ties with entprepreneurs and executives they feel can do it again.

Four years ago, lured into a mainstream cardiovascular business by the promise of drug-eluting stents, Abbott set about revamping its medical products business in an effort to create a device business that would rival its pharmaceutical business in financial returns. What was at first a niche strategy, aimed at bringing small, but interesting technologies to interventionalists, has become a more broad-based play that, company officials hope, will place them among the leaders in vascular devices.