Starts & Stops is a regular feature in Medtech Insight highlighting noteworthy clinical trial announcements, initiations, completions, and suspensions tracked by Meddevicetracker. This edition covers the start of 2018, which includes important trial announcements from Abbott, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Edwards and many more. The Stops & Starts feature will be switching to a weekly schedule as of March 5 to offer more timely updates on medical device trials.

Most of the large, diversified medtech companies have now reported their sales and earnings for the second quarter and first half of 2017. All of the companies in this category reported revenue growth and promised investment in new technologies across all their businesses, but a Baxter and Cardinal Health stand out as having especially successful quarters. Abbott is still trying to overcome major challenges, and J&J is turning around its medical device businesses under new leadership.

Approvals of neurostimulation and cardiology devices dominated the list of non-US medtech approvals in June. According to Medtech Insight's Approvals Tracker, there were 36 medtech approvals outside the US last total that month, including 28 CE marks in Europe, plus approvals from China, Canada, Australia/New Zealand and Brazil.