Three of the week’s biggest stories were companies deciding what they are not. Abbott is cutting loose $8.5 billion in formula and shakes, Qiagen is leaving the public markets, and J&J and Smith+Nephew got within weeks of the year’s biggest orthopedics combination before it fell apart. A $22 billion portfolio, undone by an argument over who gets the corner office.
Put your brand in front of 35,000+ medical device and med tech leaders each week. Contact us to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.
8 things to watch this week:
1. 🏭 Abbott cuts loose $8.5 billion in formula and shakes
Abbott will spin its global nutrition business into a separate public company, handing shareholders stock in both. The unit carries about $8.5 billion in annual sales, 16,000 employees and 14 plants, with Ensure, PediaSure, Glucerna and Similac. It should stand alone by the end of 2027. Abbott cut full-year guidance the same morning, trimming comparable sales growth to 6% and EPS to $5.50 to $5.55. The medtech core gets the attention now, and the scrutiny with it.
MassDevice
2.🤝 EQT is taking Qiagen private at €10.8 billion
Qiagen’s boards unanimously backed an all-cash offer from EQT at €46.50 a share, a 40% premium to its July close, valuing the diagnostics company at about €10.8 billion including debt. ADIA and CPP Investments are co-investing. Closing is expected mid-2027, with Frankfurt and NYSE delistings to follow. Sample prep and molecular testing are steady, unglamorous businesses that private capital can hold through a rebuild. Expect more of this where public multiples have stopped rewarding the work.
QIAGEN
3. 🧩 The year’s biggest orthopedics deal died over who would run it
Merger talks between Smith+Nephew and J&J’s orthopedics business collapsed weeks before a mid-October close, according to people familiar with them. J&J shareholders would have held 50.1% of a company roughly twice Smith+Nephew’s £9.4 billion market value, with the hip and knee unit alone valued near $22 billion. J&J wanted Namal Nawana, Smith+Nephew’s CEO until 2019, to lead it; Smith+Nephew wanted to keep Deepak Nath. Neither side has confirmed the talks, and Smith+Nephew’s growth problem is still there for whoever comes next.
MD+DI
🧰 Your best engineer shouldn’t be building the investor deck.
Device teams are staffed for engineering, regulatory, and quality. The commercial case is a different job: positioning, the investor and sales materials, the website, the story a buyer actually hears. It lands on whoever has room that week, or gets split across vendors who never speak to each other. RŌG Health builds the whole set as one group, with specialists on the parts that need them. We were Scientia Vascular’s strategic and creative partner for five years, right up to the end; Scientia was acquired by Medtronic this year for $550 million. Start with a conversation about where your case is thin.
Sponsored by RŌG Health
4. 🔒 Quest tells the SEC that patient records were taken
Quest Diagnostics disclosed a cyberattack in an 8-K filing, saying unauthorized access touched certain patient records in Quanum, the ordering and billing platform it says about half a million clinicians use across North America. Quest has not said how many patients are affected, what data was taken, or when the intrusion began. Law enforcement is involved. The exposure sits in the ordering layer, not the lab, and that layer is what most diagnostics companies now rent from someone else.
TechCrunch
5. 🩹 Solventum gets to sell the $900 million acquisition as one system
FDA cleared Solventum’s Restrata resorbable matrix for use with its V.A.C. negative pressure wound therapy, including the Ulta unit and Granufoam dressings. Restrata came with Acera Surgical, bought for $900 million and closed in late 2025. The company argues Restrata’s slower absorption suits seven-day peel-and-place dressings where collagen products break down early. This is what an acquisition should look like two years on: one label, one call point, one reason the premium made sense.
MassDevice
6. 🇯🇵 Japan’s regulator writes down what it would need to approve a generative AI device
PMDA published English review points for generative AI in medical devices, acknowledging no adequate framework exists for bounding or judging outputs. It leans on a total life cycle approach: premarket evidence may hold if gathered under representative conditions, provided that status is maintained after launch and incidents get caught. PMDA has approved none of these devices yet. Three regulators have now said much the same thing in three documents, which matters to anyone building one file and submitting it three times.
RAPS
7. 🧠 Founders Fund and OpenAI’s venture arm put $45 million into a brain tumor implant
Coherence Neuro raised $45 million co-led by Founders Fund and the OpenAI Startup Fund, with Lux Capital, 8VC and Ahren joining. Its SOMA system reads electrical signals tied to a tumor and uses them to steer stimulation, pairing a wireless implant with an over-ear power and data unit. A cortical probe entered first-in-human use in June at Royal Melbourne Hospital. Nothing is approved anywhere, the biomarkers are validated in mice, and a chronic glioblastoma trial is next.
Health Tech World
8. 👂 Med-El’s new cochlear implant has no outside part at all
Med-El launched TICI Unico in several European markets, calling it the first fully implantable cochlear implant. Microphone included, everything sits under the skin, so recipients hear while sleeping, swimming and charging. The battery is expected to last 15 years or more, and a daily external charger looks like a conventional processor. It carries a CE mark and no FDA approval. Austria built the thing device marketing has promised for years: the implant nobody can see.
MD+DI
🧭 About The Pathway
The Pathway is a curated briefing for medical device leaders, focused on regulatory moves, product launches, partnerships, and market signals shaping the industry.
If this was useful, consider subscribing or sharing with a colleague who should be tracking these developments.
Some issues may include sponsored or partner content. Sponsorship does not influence editorial selection of third-party news items.