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Bicoastal venture titan New Enterprise Associates ranked as the most active VC firm in the country last year, according to investment research firm CB Insights.

NEA, which has major offices in Chevy Chase, beat out Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, Andreesen Horowitz and other top VCs, according to the report, which attributes NEA’s exuberance to its shiny new $2.6 billion fund. Major NEA deals last year include Sonatype Inc., Desire2Learn, 10Gen and Lithium Technologies.

Gov. Martin O’Malley released a $37 billion spending plan Wednesday that for the first time in recent years contains no drastic cuts or proposed tax increases.

Amid a stronger economy, O’Malley also proposed to boost the pay for state workers, expand tax credits for some high-tech industries and set aside more money to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

“These have been challenging years to say the least,” O’Malley said.

Another day, another class of digital health startups. That’s how it feels sometimes, with so many accelerators working with dozens of new companies each year. While there are plenty of “me-too” startups entering crowded markets, accelerators are still managing to find some fresh and interesting gems.

Blueprint Health’s winter program kicks off this week with the addition of Verizon, Humana and Aetna as partners, as TechCrunch reports. It’s also brought on mentors from powerhouses like the Cleveland Clinic, Optum, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Weight Watchers.

British healthcare firm GlaxoSmithKline has filed for US regulatory approval of its new type 2 diabetes drug albiglutide, which belongs to the same group of injectable GLP-1 receptor agonists as Byetta, Bydureon and Victoza .

GSK announced on Monday that it had submitted the once-weekly medication to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval and confirmed that it also plans to seek European Union regulatory approval for the new product in 2013.

Peter Greenleaf is stepping down down as president of Gaithersburg-based biotechnology giant MedImmune, according to a company spokesman, to take the helm of parent company AstraZeneca’s Latin America business.

He will be replaced by Bahija Jallal, who currently serves as MedImmune’s executive vice president of research and development. Jallal joined the company in 2006 as vice president of translational sciences.

MedImmune executive Bahija Jallal will be the new chief of the Gaithersburg biotech under a leadership shuffle by parent company AstraZeneca, a spokesman confirmed Wednesday. Current MedImmune President Peter Greenleaf will lead AstraZeneca’s Latin American business.

Jallal, who joined MedImmune in 2006 as a vice president of translational sciences, has also been promoted to AstraZeneca’s senior executive team, according to an announcement on Tuesday. That announcement, however, left unclear exactly how her role at MedImmune would change, and how that change would affect Greenleaf.

There might be a lot of griping about how tight the venture capital world is when it comes to funding medical devices, but reality seems to be spinning a different yarn altogether.

A new funding report from CB Insights, a venture capital database, describes the medical device industry as the “sector darling” of VCs who invested in healthcare in the fourth quarter of 2012. In fact medical device deals comprised 42 percent of the overall number of healthcare deals done in the fourth quarter of last year. By comparison biotech deals stood at 15 percent, drug development at 13 percent and pharmaceuticals at 10 percent.

The buzz around biotechnology investing that could be felt this year at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference could reach the beleaguered medical-device sector as well.

But it won’t be a spate of IPOs—and the headlines they generate–that re-ignites interest in device companies, several investors said.

“What we are really hoping to see in 2013 are great new products approved, and put on the market,” said Ryan Drant, a general partner at New Enterprise Associates and a board member at the Medical Device Manufacturers Association.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it one bajillion times. If you’re going to start a business accelerator, don’t clone Y Combinator or TechStars. Find a niche. With the glut of new accelerators today, the most successful are building vertical-specific approaches that bring together seed capital with meaningful industry partnerships to create real business (and learning) opportunities for their startups. Lately, digital health has been leading the way in this regard, as Rock Health, Healthbox, New York Digital Health Accelerator, DreamIt Health and Startup Health are all beginning to blossom.

One of the veterans (a relative term) of this space is the NYC-based Blueprint Health, an accelerator that got its start in 2011 and launched its first batch in January of last year. Today, the accelerator is announcing its third batch of startups as part of its Winter Program, which kicks off on Monday.