A Medical Device Daily

VirtualHealth Technologies (VHGI; Lexington, Kentucky) has reported an agreement with its subsidiary Secure eHealth to market DRM Security's (Fort Worth, Texas) Secure Document Courier and Storage technology (Cifra) to the healthcare markets.

Secure eHealth will have preferred rights to market Cifra directly to end users including small and large physician groups, as well as preferred rights to market it to regional health organizations, health information exchange programs and other healthcare vendors and parties.

VHGI President Jim Renfro said, "We are very excited to finalize this important agreement. This completes the foundation for our secure healthcare platform and gives healthcare providers a superior way to securely share and store critical patient information. This will ultimately help increase the quality of care while reducing the cost in our current healthcare system."

Cifra is integrated with the Secure eHealth System Tray Notifier product that has been licensed to Private Access (Irvine, California), a provider of web-based tools that allows patients and healthcare professionals to control both the privacy and accessibility of confidential personal health records.

System Tray Notifier (STN) is designed to revolutionize the communication of sensitive healthcare information by providing single click access to important messages from within the user's system tray without interrupting workflow. It securely displays images, documents or messages directly from its server. Cifra is the secure messaging system and database that STN notifications point to. STN is based on two patents with others pending.

VirtualHealth Executive Vice President of Operations Robert Tapales said, "Our ability to market both Cifra and STN gives us a powerful and unique security platform for the healthcare market. Together they create an ideal security foundation for health information exchanges and for health information systems. The system is completely scalable so it is a beneficial security platform for just about any size organization or operation. This is a new level of protection that is packaged in a reliable, logical and simple solution with multiple layers and dimensions of security that provide superior protection in an easy to use interface."

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Relational Technology Solutions (Rolling Meadows, Illinois), the fifth largest independent finance company in the U.S., said that it has entered into a vendor financing agreement with MAKO Surgical (Fort Lauderdale, Florida), a company that markets its surgeon-interactive robotic arm system, and proprietary implants, for a minimally invasive orthopedic knee procedure called MAKOplasty. Under the arrangement, hospitals will be able to fund equipment purchases of MAKO's RIO robotic arm system through monthly operating lease payments through RTS.

• CliniComp International (San Diego) reported a new contract with the Department of Defense (DoD) to deploy its Essentris inpatient clinical documentation solution in 36 additional military treatment facilities. The new contract more than doubles CliniComp's current installations for the DoD, expanding the company's role as the DoD-wide provider of inpatient clinical documentation solutions for the clinical areas of the Military Health System.

• Stereotaxis (St. Louis) said that Novation (Irving, Texas) will add Stereotaxis' Niobe Remote Magnetic Navigation and Odyssey systems to its capital products contract portfolio. This is an exclusive agreement; Stereotaxis' Niobe System will be the only robotic interventional technology among Novation's capital products offerings. This agreement is effective immediately. Novation serves more than 2,500 hospitals.

• Merge Healthcare (Milwaukee) and Rosslyn Medical (Moscow), an imaging solution provider serving the Russian market, have extended their partnership to expand the portfolio of Merge OEM products available to Rosslyn. This new agreement brings the Russian market access to "zero client" web technologies, PACS applications and clinical workstations that Rosslyn will integrate into custom solutions for their customers.

• Sequenom (San Diego) and GeneWorks (Thebarton, Australia) reported an exclusive sales agency agreement under which GeneWorks will assist Sequenom in expanding its sales and marketing presence in Australia. The partnership will initially focus on new business development activity across Australia. GeneWorks said that it has experience in the supply of genomics technologies and reagents and is an Australian manufacturer of high quality oligonucleotides and offers a range of genetic analysis services including sequencing services.