A Medical Device Daily

More than 2,100 U.S. hospitals and 58,000 additional health care providers will now have access to special pricing and terms for a biologically-based technology for soft-tissue repair through a contractual relationship between Cook Medical (Bloomington, Indiana) and Premier Purchasing Partners, (San Diego) a national leader in helping to improve the quality and affordability of healthcare the companies reported.

Under the new agreement, effective July 1, 2009, Cook's Biodesign Advanced Tissue Repair products designed for the surgical treatment of incontinence, will bring a new technology for soft tissue repair to Premier's extensive base of providers.

"This contract award is yet another indication that the market is clamoring for a biologically-based tissue repair solution that may deliver better surgical outcomes than synthetic alternatives and an improved quality of life for patients," said Pete Yonkman, Cook's executive VP of sales and marketing. "We look forward to furthering our relationship with Premier to provide advanced patient care throughout its network of non-profit hospitals."

Cook's Biodesign line is the fifth product contract with Premier, and specifies four applications for soft tissue repair: continence restoration, fistula repair, vaginal erosion repair and pelvic-floor reconstruction. Historically, physicians have had just two options for treatment of these conditions: synthetic mesh or biologic grafts.

The Biodesign product line offers a new alternative in which the graft communicates with surrounding cells to encourage tissue growth across the scaffold. Biodesign technology combines the best attributes of a biologic graft – resistance to infection and complete remodeling – with the added benefits of moderate price, ease of use and widespread availability. Cook has 22 FDA clearances for its Biodesign technology, which is available in 91 countries and has been used to treat more than one million patients.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Zynx Health (Los Angeles) the leader in evidence-based healthcare, and eClinicalWorks (Westborough, Massachusetts), a developer in ambulatory clinical systems, reported a partnership to provide Zynx Ambulatory Care order sets to eClinicalWorks clients.

The evidence-based content will provide an out-of-the-box solution to help eClinicalWorks clients improve quality of care and succeed in performance measure programs.

Through this partnership, Zynx order sets were built directly into the eClinicalWorks EMR, and are available for immediate use by eClinicalWorks clients.

This integration greatly reduces the time and resources needed to build and maintain order sets, and will help ensure that clinicians are providing care in line with the latest evidence and performance measures. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), providers will be reimbursed for demonstrating "meaningful use" of an EMR system.

"The new features in eClinicalWorks Version 8 made order sets a key part of clinical workflow," said Scott Weingarten, MD, MPH, president/CEO of Zynx. "The fully integrated library of order sets from Zynx will help eClinicalWorks clients take advantage of this new EHR functionality. Evidence-based clinical decision support, such as order sets, is becoming increasingly important as physician practices work to demonstrate 'meaningful use' of EHRs."

• NxStage Medical, (Lawrence, Massachusetts) a manufacturer of dialysis products, reported that its Medisystems subsidiary has extended for three years a supply and distribution agreement with Fenwal (Lake Zurich, Illinois).

Medisystems provides needle sets and assemblies to Fenwal, a global medical technology company focused on improving blood collection, separation, safety and availability for patient care. Medisystems products involved in this agreement include the MasterGuard needle sets with FingerShield safety technology, the leading worldwide needle-stick prevention device.

• Irvine Scientific (Santa Ana, California) reported a new distribution partnership with Prodimed (Neuilly en Thelle, France), a company specializing in women's health. Effective immediately, Irvine Scientific will be distributing Prodimed's extensive line of embryo transfer catheters, oocyte retrieval needles, and intra-uterine insemination cannulas within the U.S.