A Medical Device Daily

Competitive Technologies (CTT; Fairfield, Connecticut) reported that the University of Wisconsin-Madison will use CTT's pain therapy medical device to treat patients at its Carbone Cancer Center in the School of Medicine and Public Health, under the direction of Toby Campbell, MD, Miroslav Backonja, MD, and James Cleary, MD.

"We are pleased to be partnering with the University of Wisconsin and Drs. Backonja, Cleary and Campbell to offer this non-invasive option for their patients suffering from debilitating pain," said John Nano, CTT's chairman, president/CEO. "With all the negative press about narcotic painkillers, it is incredibly rewarding to be able to provide this effective alternative."

"Our device completely avoids the addictive properties, adverse side effects and risk of death associated with narcotic painkillers," said Aris Despo, CTT's executive VP, Business Development. "The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics reported last month that the number of fatal poisonings involving opioid analgesics more than tripled from 1999 to 2006, largely due to the increased use of these powerful narcotic painkillers. In that same period, deaths from opioid poisoning overtook traffic fatalities as the largest cause of injury-related deaths in 16 states, including our home state of Connecticut. Our pain therapy medical device has none of these adverse side effects."

CTT has exclusive worldwide rights to the device, which has FDA clearance for sales in the U.S. as well as medical device CE certification from the EU.

In other agreements/contracts new, Lumetra (San Francisco) reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded the California-based healthcare consulting organization a contract for Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Protected Clinical Peer Review Services. Effective on Sept. 30, 2009, the contract is for a one-year period, with the VHA having the choice to exercise four option years. Clinical peer review is a critical review of an episode of care performed by a peer and/or group of peers. Lumetra's contract calls upon the company to address these two objectives: To assess the accuracy and adequacy of clinical peer review conducted internally within a VHA Medical Center through an audit of randomly selected as well as high-risk cases; and to provide external expertise in order to conduct the primary clinical peer review of selected episodes of care, either upon request of a facility or for other special circumstances.