It’s September, and here at Medical Design & Outsourcing that means it’s time for the Big 100, our annual look at the largest players in the medical technology world.

Actually, around here Big 100 time started months ago, when we began scouring regulatory filings and annual reports. Here you’ll find the result, information on the world’s 100 leading medical technology companies, ranked according to annual revenues, plus rankings according to R&D spend and number of employees.

The Big 100 also includes a look at executives’ notable moves into – and out of – the corner office, and maps showing medical technology hotspots in the U.S. and around the world. And this year we’re providing a glimpse at 10 companies that could make the jump to the 2017 Big 100.

In compiling the issue, we used data from the most recently concluded fiscal year for each company, plus information from our own archives, corporate documents and public regulatory filings and the companies’ websites.

For diversified companies like Johnson & Johnson, which have businesses in non-medical device areas, we took into account only the numbers reported for their medtechrelated
businesses (J&J made that much easier this year by ditching its Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics business to focus on devices).

We used the 2015 average exchange rates set by the U.S. Federal Reserve to calculate U.S. dollar conversions for companies that report in other currencies.

Last year once again featured lots of churn along the list, as companies acquired and were acquired in an M&D feeding frenzy. Most notably, Medtronic’s acquisition of Covidien pushed it into the top spot this year, displacing Johnson & Johnson for the first time since we began compiling the list in 2011.

Likewise, Becton Dickinson’s buyout of CareFusion pushed it from 37th to 8th on the list; Abbott vaulted from 45th last year to 23rd this year (and that doesn’t even account for its pending $25 billion pickup of St. Jude Medical).

Other companies, such as Cook Medical, Ottobock and Hanger Orthopedic, would likely have made the list had they posted results for 2015 (the German prosthetics giant is reportedly preparing to take itself public). But again acquisitions played the largest role, taking these companies off the table:

• Allergan (acquired by Actavis)
• Arseus (acquired by Henry Schein)
• Arthrocare (acquired by Smith & Nephew)
• Biomet (acquired by Zimmer)
• Endo Health Solutions (exited devices with the sale of its American Medical Systems urology business to Boston Scientific)
• Hospira (acquired by Pfizer)
• Medical Action Industries (acquired by Owens & Minor)
• Mindray Medical (taken private by management)
• Nobel Biocare (acquired by Danaher)
• Symmetry Medical (acquired by Tecomet)
• Toshiba Medical Systems (dealt to Canon)
• Volcano (acquired by Philips)
• Welch Allyn (acquired by Hill-Rom)