• Aesculap (Center Valley, Pennsylvania), the U.S. business unit of Aesculap Ag & Co., which focuses on design and manufacturing of neurosurgical products and medical equipment, signed a three-year agreement with Premier (San Diego) for neurosurgery products. The agreement covers both adult and pediatric neurosurgical products in the categories of aneurysm clips, bi-polar instrumentation, CranioFix cranial fixation products, dura-plasty products, Minop minimally invasive neuroendoscopy equipment, neuro-instrumentation, neuro-power equipment, scalp homeostasis products, hydrocephalous shunts and ultrasonic aspirators.

• AtekMedical Manufacturing (Minneapolis) said it worked together with Medtronic Navigation (Louis-ville, Colorado) to produce tracking devices for three surgical categories including cranial, spinal and orthopedic. In addition to manufacturing, Atek Medical Manufacturing worked closely with Medtronic Navigation to design and develop electromagnetic trackers used with AxiEM, the Medtronic electromagnetic navigation system. Medtronic Navigation also said it has entered into an agreement with Breakaway Imaging (Littleton, Massachusetts), a privately held developer of medical imaging systems for surgery, giving it exclusive worldwide distribution and marketing of Breakaway’s O-arm Imaging System, an intraoperative crossover technology enabling 2-D (fluoroscopy), multi-plane 2-D and 3-D volumetric imaging system. The agreement, terms of which were not disclosed, is effective immediately.

• B. Braun (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), a global healthcare products and services company, has entered into a three-year, dual-source agreement with Novation, the supply company of VHA (Irving, Texas) and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC; Oak Brook, Illinois), in order to offer its comprehensive line of regional anesthesia trays. This agreement is the second the companies have signed in the last 21 months.

• Iris International (Chatsworth, California), a mak- er of automated IVD urinalysis systems and medical devices used in hospitals and clinical reference laboratories worldwide, has entered into a supply agreement for its automated urinalysis systems, related products and consumables with Mid-Atlantic Group Purchasing Network of Shared Services (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania).

• Natus Medical (San Carlos, California) has been awarded a three-year supplier agreement for its neoBlue LED Phototherapy Systems by Novation. A new medical technology supplier agreement is awarded when Novation’s clinical evaluation council determines that a medical product provides incremental patient care and safety benefits over technology that is currently available. Natus has been designated as a contracted provider of phototherapy light products, making its line of neoBlue LED Phototherapy Systems available to about 2,500 VHA and UHC member healthcare organizations. Natus develops products for the detection, treatment, monitoring, and tracking of common disorders in newborns and children.

• Siemens Medical Solutions (Concord, California) and Impac Medical Systems (Mountain View, California), part of the Elekta Group (Stockholm, Sweden) and a provider of information technology solutions for oncology care, entered into a five-year extension of their software distribution agreement, which enables Siemens to distribute its Lantis Oncology Information System, based upon Impac’s integrated clinical and administrative management systems, to oncology practices worldwide.

• Spacelabs Medical (Issaquah, Washington), a division of OSI Systems (Hawthorne, California), said it has received a multi-phased contract from the Nemours/ Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children (Wilmington, Delaware) for patient monitoring systems. Phase I of the contract is worth about $3 million, with Phases II and III still to be determined based upon the customer’s needs. The agreement calls for Spacelabs patient monitoring systems to be installed enterprise-wide in three phases, with the goal of providing clinicians easy access to all patient information at the point of care. The first phase of the contract calls for the replacement of all critical care monitors.

• Tm Bioscience (Toronto), a player in the commercial genetic testing market, has signed an agreement to supply PathGroup (Brentwood, Tennessee) with the Tag-It ASR reagents for use in its cystic fibrosis gene assay.

• Tunstall (Brookfield, Wisconsin), which focuses on telecare and telehealth solutions, has entered into a distribution and alliance agreement with Honeywell HomMed (also Brookfield), a U.S. provider of remote patient-monitoring devices

• UC Irvine School of Medicine (Irvine, California), through its division of cardiology, entered into a joint agreement to collaborate on development of the UCI/Toshiba CT Education and Research Center. The training center is being built on the UCI campus and will be open to UCI medical students and staff beginning next month. The center is installing Toshiba America Medical Systems’ (Tustin, California) multi-slice computed tomography (CT) cardiac imaging technology, the Aquilion 64 CFX system, to improve the detection and treatment of heart disease. UCI also plans to install several Vital Images workstations.