Medication adherence is a big problem, and recent studies are bringing the actual costs and causes into sharper focus. At the same time, health care reforms such as electronic health records and prescriptions, as well as new incentives from the US government, have encouraged investors to tackle solutions to the problem. Questions remain about the impact of these reforms, but the companies profiled in this issue, HealthPrize Technologies, PillJogger, RxAnte and SentiCare, see an evolving climate in which their medication adherence technology solutions can turn into profitable businesses.

Now that transcatheter heart valves have been implanted in thousands of humans, it’s becoming clear where the problems lie. Vascular and bleeding complications, stroke and paravalvular leaks are the most troubling consequences. Most of the focus has been on improving the valves and the delivery systems, but now innovators are looking at the issue of access – the particular ways by which therapeutic devices enter the heart – and how it can be changed to improve outcomes. In this issue we profile Apica Cardiovascular, Entourage Medical and Inseal Medical.

New minimally invasive interventions for structural heart disease use ever larger devices, creating challenges for transfemoral access site management. While the current state of the art is trying to transform surgical practices into interventional ones, Inseal Medical has a large-bore vascular access closure device that works the way interventional cardiologists do.