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.

After apparently exhausting every other means of obtaining access to the drug it needs to enter the drug-eluting stent market as quickly as possible, Guidant's decision to acquire Cook Group for $3 billion hinges on whether a Federal judge agrees with Guidant's argument that the deal doesn't result in an ownership change of the Cook Group's Cook Inc. subsidiary.

Invatec is the product of a father's natural technical skill and love of using technology to solve problems, passed on to his son and daughter. Initially based out of the Venturelli family's home, Invatec started by building custom products for interventional cardiologists in Germany and Italy, and then became an OEM supplier to larger companies. The company initially relied on the Venturellis' (father's and son's) engineering expertise to develop superior technology, while maintaining the responsiveness to physicians' demands that first brought the company to physicians' attention. The goal: to develop a broad-based interventional vascular products business globally under the Invatec name. Already selling products throughout Europe and Asia, the company is biding its time before entering the US market. Invatec's initial product lines include interventional cardiology catheters and balloons, an embolic protection system designed for carotid angioplasty, and a line of interventional peripheral vascular products. The company has also developed a radio frequency ablation system aimed at treating a variety of tumors. To this point, Invatec has largely operated beneath the radar screens of major cardiovascular device companies, which tend to see the company primarily as an OEM supplier. Invatec's efforts to launch a wide range of branded products will bring the company head-to-head with large companies in an already-consolidated market in which superior technology, while essential, is often not enough to carry the day on its own.