Here’s a summary of the products featured last week on Medgadget, along with our usual chatter about the product names..

Inovio Biomedical’s Medpulser Electroporation therapy device, an electroporation system specifically designed for the local tumorablation through electrochemotharapy. The device applies a controlled electric field to targeted tissues locally and allows individual cells to be perfused with a specific chemotherapeutic agents. The Medpulser name, however, is generic and could be used by any device that applies a “pulsed” field.

Lodox’s Statscan full-body X-ray machine, which apparently is selling like hotcakes. Congrats Lodox! Statscan, however, is another generic name that could be applied to any x-ray machine and sounds like a computer program for statistical analysis.

Calisto Medical’s wristwatch-like Glucoband glucose monitoring device. This device competes against the Glucon, the GlucoWatch and the Continuous Glucose Monitoring Device. See what happens when you name your product descriptively?

Syneron Medical’s VelaSmooth device for treating cellulite. A vela is a thin membrane or tissue. That said, VelaSmooth literally means a device for smoothing out a thin membrane or tissue. In other words, it’s an iron for cellulite. Not sure that name will go over with women.

Medtronic’s SynergyPlus+ pain control device. Being huge fans of Medtronics, we are more than a little disappointed in the Plus-plus name. This is an addition to the product line (the other devices are the Restore [awesome name] and the Synergy [overused]).

We hate to say it, but per usual, it was a ho-hum week for medical device branding. That said, Glucoband presented an important lesson in branding. Descriptive names are the names that companies tend to lean towards. As a result, they are often overused. As a further results, your marketing and advertising teams will have to work extra hard to distinguish your product from the competitions’. Why not start out with a name that is truly original and blow away the competition from the get-go?

The classic examples are Apple Computer, Starbucks and Virgin Airlines. In the medical device industry, Barrx has the Halo 360, Guidant has the Octopus, and Medtronics’ has the HeartString. These are interesting medical product names that get researchers, physicians and investors talking.