The company announced July 20 the start of its 30-patient, single-arm FAST study assessing its everolimus-eluting scaffold system, but executives says Boston Scientific will be closely considering whether the system warrants long-term investment, considering the promise of its Synergy stent.

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.

Medtech manufacturers saw 2014 as the year of the medtech mega-merger and a rebound in IPOs. But the market is changing, and companies are increasingly cast as service providers who must deliver value.

The cardiology sector, long known as one of the most innovative in medtech, has a new wave of technologies on the horizon that could help reinvigorate the sector and create new multibillion-dollar market opportunities for device manufacturers. We take a closer look at these technologies, which include vagal nerve stimulation, remote monitoring for heart failure, as well as innovation in the percutaneous coronary intervention space, all of which were all in the spotlight at the recent European Society of Cardiology Congress 2014 in Barcelona.