A Medical Device Daily
Meddius (Charlottesville, Virginia) reported it will provide integration technology and professional services to assist with the deployment of Premier’s (San Diego) SafetySurveillor infection control system, which provides hospitals with a web-based, automated approach to detect and alert staff of healthcare-associated infections.
Meddius will provide a comprehensive integration platform for Premier’s customers to integrate their clinical data into the SafetySurveillor system.
A key component of the platform is Meddius’ Integration Router, which delivers message transformation, communication and routing functions within a single, rack-mountable network device. The core engine transforms between disparate message formats.
In other Premier-related news, Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported that new agreements for peak-use rental equipment services have been awarded to Hill-Rom (Batesville, Indiana) and Universal Hospital Services (Edina, Minnesota).
The 36-month agreements, which took effect Dec. 1, are available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier alliance. Premier is a group purchasing network.
WellPoint (Indianapolis) and Quotit (Irvine, California), an Internet application service provider for the health insurance and employee benefits industry, said they have formed an alliance to provide insurance rate quotes on Medicare plans to America’s growing senior population.
Through this joint venture, agents of WellPoint-affiliated health plans can gain full access to Quotit’s proprietary software enabling them to offer Medicare-eligible consumers the most competitive pricing available for their Medicare and Medicare Advantage health insurance needs.
The agreement between Quotit and WellPoint expands on an existing relationship between the two companies and was formed to address the growing health insurance needs of an aging American population, the companies said.
In other agreement news:
• MedCath (Charolotte, North Carolina) and TexSAn Heart Hospital (San Antonio) and the hospital’s physician partners said the hospital has signed managed care agreements with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX).
The new contracts provide in-network access to TexSAn Heart Hospital for approximately 200,000 BCBSTX enrollees in the San Antonio area, including enrollees in BCBSTX’s Traditional, BlueChoice, BlueChoice Solutions and HMO plans.
The new agreements for BCBSTX’s BlueChoice, BlueChoice Solutions and HMO networks have an effective date of April 1.
• Great Lakes Pharmaceuticals (Concord, Ohio) reported signing exclusive license agreements with the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System, acting on behalf of the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston) and Wake Forest University Health Sciences (WFUHS; Winston-Salem, North Carolina).
The licenses grant Great Lakes exclusive worldwide rights to intellectual property owned jointly by the Board of Regents and WFUHS, and related intellectual property solely owned by the board, to develop and commercialize certain antimicrobial catheter flush solutions.
Great Lakes Pharmaceuticals said it expects to leverage the licensed technology to bring to market a catheter flush solution with antimicrobial and anti-thrombotic properties designed to address the pressing problem of catheter-related bloodstream infections.