Q4 device financing reached $902 million versus Q3’s $734 million, while device M&A dollar volume increased $19 billion, from Q3’s $4.9 billion. Diagnostics companies raised $750 million, an 85% rise over the previous quarter’s $405 million; although diagnostics M&A totaled just $1 billion, it was the most deal-active quarter of 2014 with 11 transactions.

Healthy market growth, the biggest ever M&A deal, a record number of billion-dollar takeovers, and the IPO market in impressive bounce-back…2014 was a year of superlatives for the global medtech industry. But with more expected of manufacturers while health care spending remains in the doldrums and demand for care rises, the long-term medtech winners will be those who can forecast how and where to make an impact on both costs and patient outcomes.

In many ways, the year in diagnostics can be characterized as “more of the same.” The biggest newsmaker was FDA’s finally taking steps toward establishing an oversight framework for the regulation of laboratory-developed tests.