Bovie Medical I read an article in the Wall Street Journal on July 18th that got me thinking about opportunities. The article which is attached is about Nokia who seven years before Apple came out with the iPhone or the iPad, had both out of their R&D department. But unfortunately for Nokia, and good for Apple, they didn’t benefit from their work.

This got me thinking about Bovie® which we bought from Maxxim Medical in May of 1998. We later changed our company name to Bovie Medical Corporation. Prior to the acquisition of Bovie, Aaron Medical was making smaller office based electrosurgical equipment. We wanted to grow that business and expand into the larger generators found in the hospital arena. Bovie® a registered trademark of Bovie Medical Corporation was the Kleenex® (a registered trademark of Kimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc.) name for this type of equipment in the operating room. This came about by William T. Bovie inventing electrosurgery in 1926. Bovie became the name and the market leader, but they failed to innovate over time and the Bovie brand got sold twice before we acquired it. Unfortunately, the prior two purchasers failed to do the R&D necessary to keep the lead over other competitors. I guess the good news about that is that we would not be able to afford the acquisition if they had done it right to begin with. So today, while Bovie is the market leader from the physician office to the surgery center, we are way behind in the hospital arena.

Might we be getting a second opportunity to retake the lead with J-Plasma? Our early results at our beta sites indicate some obvious advantages when using the J-Plasma technology verses electrosurgery and laser. We have a ways to go yet, but we sure are encouraged by the direction we are headed.