A Medical Device Daily

Siemens Healthcare (Malvern, Pennsylvania) has renewed its strategic alliance with NextGen Healthcare Information Systems (Atlanta) to deliver ambulatory information technology (IT) solutions. More than 35 Siemens customers have already deployed NextGen Healthcare's ambulatory IT tools throughout their physician networks as a result of the relationship, formed to offer healthcare providers interoperable solutions that cross the care coordination gap between the acute and ambulatory environments.

In today's healthcare environment, exchanging health information across disparate systems and being positioned to receive government incentive monies tied to the HITECH provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have become key drivers for technology adoption among healthcare providers. However, as patients seek and receive care in multiple settings, many physicians still lack shared access to key patient information such as patient history, medications, details of acute-care visits, and discharge summary notes.

NextGen Healthcare's interoperable ambulatory IT solution, available to Siemens customers through the renewed alliance, helps fill this void by enabling providers to access health information more readily across the healthcare continuum. Ideal for the multi-practice enterprise or solo practitioner, the application helps users to easily create and maintain complete medical records while it streamlines workflow, provides disease management capabilities, and helps them manage outcomes data. As a result, clinicians are better enabled to optimize patient care, the risk of the human element in medical error is reduced, and costs can be better controlled because duplicate testing and services are minimized, the company said.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• iTech Medical (Huntington Beach, California) has signed an exclusive, three-year manufacturing agreement with Thought Technology (Montreal) for the company's Muscle Pattern Recognition (MPR) technology. MPR is a patented clinical tool that analyzes patterns of muscle recruitment. It provides detailed physiological information on muscle function that can assist in the diagnosis and treatment of back and neck injuries and illness.

"We have been working with Thought Technology for over 10 years and during that time have seen our relationship grow from contract manufacturing to one that now includes collaboration on product development," said Steve Asselin, VP of R&D for iTech Medical. "As we move into the commercialization phase of the MPR technology, we expect to be working even more closely with them, particularly on our U.S., Canadian and European regulatory filings."

iTech Medical reported that it expects to complete the clinical testing of its MPR System in 2010 and that, based on positive results, it will move the technology into commercialization in North America and Europe before the end of the year.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported new agreements for cardiac rhythm management devices have been awarded to Biotronik (Lake Oswego, Oregon), Medtronic (Minneapolis) and St. Jude Medical (St. Paul, Minnesota). Effective Feb. 1, 2010, the agreements are available to acute care and continuum of care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.