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

In a career that has spanned more than 20 years, Bill Hawkins has worked for a wide array of medical device firms, leaving his imprint on this industry. Now, as Medtronic's COO, his influence will only grow. In this interview, Hawkins talks about the history of the device industry and what lies ahead.

A preview of the emerging health care companies profiled in the current issue of Start-Up. This month's profile groups: Pain Therapeutics, Cancer Diagnostics, and MRI Innovations. Plus these Start-Ups across Health Care: Cytovance Biologics Inc., Emergent Respiratory Products Inc., and Faust Pharmaceuticals.

Two executives formerly with GE Medical Systems saw an opportunity to help imaging centers off-load, in an economical fashion, at least 25% of their MRI scans. The two founded ONI Medical Systems, developer of a miniaturized system dedicated to extremity imaging-hands, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles and feet--that would be at least one-third of the cost of the whole body scans offered by the major manufacturers, and small enough to fit in an orthopedics suite, without sacrificing image quality. Such a product doesn't necessarily compete with general-purpose whole body scanners, but complements them by decompressing the workload.