Stryker Corp. reported that it signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Vocera Communications Inc. for $2.97 billion in an all-cash transaction expected to close in the first quarter of this year. Vocera provides digital care and communication services, which Stryker said will designed to help hospitals connect caregivers and various data-generating medical devices such as wearables, paired beds, ambulation equipment, badges and alarms.

Canadian company Future Fertility Inc. is hatching plans to expand the user base for its flagship egg prediction software product, Violet, for egg cryopreservation. The noninvasive image analysis tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate the reproductive potential of mature eggs. Investors are backing the Toronto-based company with $6 million in series A funds, so it can expand internationally and develop additional assessment products.

Cancer trials that stratify patients using biomarkers increase their likelihood of proceeding to the next phase more than 500% compared to trials run without biomarkers, Canadian researchers recently determined, and biotech companies have invested heavily in identifying new biomarkers for a wide range of applications. Genialis Inc. has tackled the problem of huge investment in biomarkers with little return by developing a platform that combines artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Investors including SOSV, Cultivate(MD), Wavemaker360 Health, Blu Venture Investors and Broad Street Angels are backing Strados Labs LLC with $4.5 million. The pre-series A funding will be used to accelerate development of the company’s smart sensor platform Resp. The funding comes after Strados received FDA clearance for the product in December 2021 and brings its total raised to $7 million.

Synchron Inc. closed out 2021 by providing an opening for a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to send the first thought transferred to a tweet via an implantable brain computer interface. Philip O’Keefe, who received one of the company’s Stentrode implants in April 2020, took over the Twitter account of Sychron CEO Thomas Oxley to say, “Hello, World. Short tweet. Monumental progress.”

PARIS – Milvue SAS completed a series A round, raising more than $9 million towards deployment of its artificial intelligence-based software solution used for diagnosis and full triage of osteoarticular pathologies in emergency departments.

With a new CEO at the helm, remote patient monitoring (RPM) company Qardio Inc. believes 2022 can be a pivotal year to drive adoption of its 4G and Bluetooth-enabled cardiac solutions. The San Francisco-based company recently launched Qardiocore, an ambulatory ECG, and Qardiodirect, an end-to-end remote patient monitoring and telehealth service.

PERTH, Australia – Australian digital health company Resapp Health Ltd. received clearance from Australia’s Therapeutics Good Administration and CE mark certification in the EU for its stand-alone cough counter application that tracks cough frequency using a smartphone. The class I software as a medical device is the first regulatory approval for such an application, which uses Resapp’s machine learning algorithms to identify cough events from audio recorded using the smartphone’s in-built microphone.

French remote monitoring and software startup Implicity SAS won FDA clearance for its ILR ECG Analyzer, a medical algorithm that analyzes electrocardiogram data from implantable loop recorders (ILRs). The company plans to launch the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered algorithm, which also is CE marked, in both the U.S. and Europe beginning next month.

Announcements of new radiology solutions enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning appeared almost daily in 2021, all promising more accurate diagnoses in less time and increased productivity and confidence for radiologists. Hospitals and health care systems have increasingly recognized the advantages of these systems, with Sage Growth Partners reporting that 90% of hospitals have an AI strategy in place, up from 53% in 2019, but the deployment lags, with only 34% of hospitals having installed an AI solution.