Diagnostics Company Developing Micro-Lab Device Seeking $7 millionDiagnostics Company Developing Micro-Lab Device Seeking $7 million

Medical venture capital may be tough to come by but Ativa Medical, a novel diagnostics company in Minnesota, appears to have chosen the debt route to raise money.

A regulatory filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission shows that Ativa Medical is looking to issue debt in the amount of $7 million. A previous filing from July 2012 shows that the company raised $3.4 million in its quest to raise a total of $10 million. That was however, an equity financing round.

Incorporated in 2008, the company is developing what it claims is the "world's first micro-lab," an affordable device that uses a single drop of blood. The blood is placed on a test card and inserted in an analyzer that can within 3 to 5 minutes display results and transfer the data to other information systems.

In other words, physicians no longer need to wait for a central lab to process the tests, which in turn lengthens the time to make a diagnosis.

-- By Arundhati Parmar, Senior Editor, MD+DI