Starts & Stops is a regular feature highlighting Medtech Insight's monthly editors' picks of noteworthy medtech clinical trial announcements, initiations, completions, and suspensions. This month's edition, covering November, is led by a major milestone for Mercator Medsystems, developer of the Bullfrog micro-infusion catheter.

Japan now allows pseudonymized personal data for medical use under a licensing system for wider use of real-world data. Meanwhile, a national cost-effectiveness assessment scheme has slashed reimbursement prices for Lagevrio and Kerendia, and Alexion’s Voydeya has been added to the reimbursement tariff.

Nutritional product business had 5.1% Q1 sales growth and is like Abbott’s other segments, “super well-aligned to the global demographics and trends in health care,” says CEO Ford. But as it defends complaints of damages from powder formulas made at facility found with unsafe levels of bacterial contaminants, Abbott’s also targeted in litigation alleging failure to warn about risk of infants born prematurely developing necrotizing enterocolitis if fed cow’s milk-based formula.