A Medical Device Daily

Patient Safety Technologies (PST; Temecula, California) said that it has signed a contract with Partners HealthCare and will be implementing its Safety-Sponge System at Brigham & Women's Hospital (Boston).

"Brigham & Women's has a long tradition of innovation and leadership in establishing the highest quality of patient care. We are proud of the patient safety research we have done together and excited to add them to the growing list of users of our Safety-Sponge System," said Steven Kane, president/CEO of PST. "Adding yet another institution known for establishing industry practices further strengthens our unique position to become the standard of care for addressing one of the most common errors in surgery."

Safety-Sponge is a system designed to increase the standards of patient care and reduce healthcare costs by preventing the occurrence of surgical sponges and other items from being left inside patients after surgery, one of the most common errors in surgery.

In other agreements and contracts news:

• Edward Hospital (Naperville, Illinois) reported that it has established the Edward Neurosciences Institute in affiliation with the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation (Chicago) to bring the highest level of stroke care in the world to the west and southwest suburbs of Chicago.

The institute will feature the most advanced drug therapies and interventional neurosurgery techniques to treat strokes, the third leading cause of death in the U.S., along with other neurological disorders.

"In the new biplane lab we can stop a stroke in its tracks and even reverse its effects," said Jeffrey Miller, MD, Medical Director of the Edward Neurosciences Institute, member of the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation and one of only 300 neurointerventionalists in the U.S. "In one minimally invasive procedure, we can maneuver a tiny catheter from an artery in the patient's leg, past the heart and into the blood vessels in the far reaches of the brain, grab the clot and then remove it. We'll also be able to effectively treat a wide variety of other neurological disorders including aneurysms and brain tumors."

• Transcend Services (Atlanta), a provider of medical transcription services, has entered into a five-year single-source contract to provide medical transcription services to Health Management Associates (HMA; Naples, Florida). Prior to signing this agreement, Transcend had individual contracts with approximately 45 of HMA's 56 hospitals. The new agreement expands the existing relationship between Transcend and HMA to include HMA's hospitals which are currently using other transcription service providers.