A Medical Device Daily

The University of Pennsylvania Health System has awarded a $135 million contract for integrated service management to Siemens Healthcare (Erlangen, Germany). Over the next seven years, Siemens will be servicing and ensuring around-the-clock availability of diagnostic systems and biomedical devices from diverse manufacturers in the customer's various hospitals.

While the diagnostic systems involved include MRI scanners, CT scanners and ultrasound systems, the second group comprises, for example, laboratory systems, surveillance monitors and anesthesia units. Many diagnostic systems are constantly monitored via a data link for remote services. This can make it possible to prevent or repair faults without having to dispatch a service engineer to the installation site.

Siemens will also provide consulting services to the clinic on workflow optimization and offers advanced training for service engineers and operating personnel.

This new contract represents a continuous extension of the preceding eight-year service agreement.

In other agreements and contracts news:

• MedQuist (Mt. Laurel, New Jersey) and Clario Medical Imaging (Seattle) have agreed to expand their existing commercial relationship to enable MedQuist to market and resell Clario's zVision software. The current partnership has already produced the integration of zVision with MedQuist's SpeechQ for Radiology real-time speech recognition solution.

• Alpha Systems (Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania) has partnered with Virtua (Marlton, New Jersey) to provide document-scanning services to digitize paper-based patient records. Alpha Systems will scan patient medical records from Virtua's four hospitals in New Jersey. After they are scanned, the new electronic records will be loaded into Virtua's health information system (HIS), giving healthcare providers a comprehensive view of the patient's history of care.

• Pure Bioscience (San Diego) reported that it has expanded its business strategy through an alliance with the Richmont Sciences (Dallas), which will begin selling Pure's new antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal hard surface disinfectant and its active ingredient. The antimicrobial silver dihydrogen citrate (SDC) is the first new-generation disinfectant to be registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in more than 30 years, according to the company. Unlike traditional alcohol- or bleach-based surface disinfectants, SDC-based disinfectants continue killing bacteria for up to 24 hours. Bacterial kill times for SDC are as quick as 30 seconds, compared with up to 10 minutes for other products.

• Affiliated Computer Services (Dallas) has been awarded a contract to develop and maintain the initial phases of the Kentucky Health Information Exchange (KHIE), a system that will allow electronic medical data to be exchanged between hospitals, health care practitioners and the Kentucky Department for Medicaid Services. The three-year contract is valued at $4.5 million. "The use of the KHIE will promote continuity of care and facilitate communication and exchange of critical health information between the patient's primary care provider and other health care providers," said Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear. The system will connect healthcare providers by providing instantaneous access to items such as laboratory and image reports, medication histories, allergy histories, past medical diagnoses, hospital stays and immunizations.

• The Development Corporation of Abilene (DCOA; Abilene, Texas) reported an agreement with Emergent Technologies (Austin, Texas) to provide business development and related strategic management services to the Abilene Life Sciences Accelerator (ALSA), which serves the Abilene community by supporting life science entrepreneurs and scientists in turning technology discoveries into innovative products that improve quality of life and create sustainable economic development opportunities for the West Texas region and the state. ETI will employ the ALSA director and administrative assistant and provide business recruitment, business acceleration and strategic planning services to the ALSA and its clients.

• Affymetrix (Santa Clara, California) reported that the Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes, Environment, and Health (RPGEH) and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) have entered into an agreement with Affymetrix to support genome-wide analyses of DNA samples from 100,000 Kaiser Permanente members. The members have volunteered for a large-scale research program designed to create a new resource for studying disease, health and aging. Scientists from the program will use the just-launched Axiom Genotyping Solution, which delivers high-throughput, automated technology and enables researchers to find novel and common genetic variations associated with complex disease. DNA studies will be linked to Kaiser Permanente's electronic health record system. These resources will give researchers an entirely new platform for studying genetic and environmental influences over time on a wide variety of health conditions, across diverse populations. The program is being funded by a $24.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and over the next two years, a significant portion of this amount is expected to be used to purchase the Axiom Genotyping Solution.