Medtronic has announced a partnership with a Chinese municipal government to expand access to diabetes treatments.

Months after the U.S. FDA approved a device with the potential to close the source of many atrial fibrillation-related strokes, hospitals, cardiologists and patients find themselves in a holding pattern increasingly common for newly emerging therapies: They are waiting for the CMS to issue a national coverage determination for LAA occlusion.

One morning last year, a patient checked into a hospital in Canada as the first TAVR case of the day, and they were discharge by that evening. It was an eyebrow-raising feat for a procedure that typically requires several days of hospitalization.

The merger of Pittsburgh’s WPAHS and insurance giant Highmark is a sign of the times and the start of a trend, says Tony G. Farah, MD, CMO of Allegheny Health Network (AHN), now an integrated healthcare delivery and finance system.

For patients with cardiovascular disease, the cost of not taking prescribed medications can be worse outcomes, increased hospitalization and even death. Nevertheless, about half of patients who are prescribed statins stop taking them within a year.

Medtronic announced on Jan. 11 that it will return $5 billion to shareholders through share repurchases by the end of fiscal year 2018.

Oxford Endovascular, a medical device company spinout from the University of Oxford in England, has raised £2m (approximately $2.9 million) to develop a small metallic mesh tube to treat intracranial aneurysms.

A recent study suggests the Watchman may save money and be more cost-effective than novel oral anticoagulants in the long-run.