A Medical Device Daily

The EndoVascular Forum (EVF; Boston), an Informed Clinical Sciences company, and its partner, Complex Interventional Cardiovascular Therapy (CICT), reported a collaboration using EVF's CardioVascularCS.Org operating division to extend the influence of Electronic Medical Care Advancement for complex clinical skills development in cardiovascular medicine.

The partnership underscores the EVF's commitment to developing a new generation of tools for physicians to learn from peer experiences and to improve clinical treatment decisions and practices, the company said.

"We are pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with Complex Interventional Cardiovascular Therapy," said John Heinen, chief technology officer of Informed Clinical Sciences. "It is the mutual goal of CardioVascularSC.Org and the CICT that this will lead to a stronger partnership in the exchange of clinical experience through case studies and experiential narratives, as well as traffic general observations, clinical pearls, tips, and best practices regarding diagnostic skills, procedural skills, clinical data, and discoveries."

The companies noted that "it is now commonly accepted that the Internet is powering a new era of electronic medical care, science, and clinical development in which the massive integration of experiences and observations in and of themselves form a complementary, accelerated path to knowledge generation and dissemination."

"The end goal of this partnership is to expand and to extend the essential link that exists between physicians learning from one another at the annual CICT meeting to the CardioVascularCS.Org platform in a way that provides the tools and support on an optimized virtual platform that allows for medical specialists to effectively treat their patients, seek to improve outcomes, and collaborate to advance health care," said Issam Moussa, MD, co-director of CICT. The cardiovascular forum's online, global clinician network of 11,000 physicians provides an experientially diverse community ideal for collective intelligence engagement around cardiovascular medicine and care.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering of North Carolina (JSNN; Browns Summit, North Carolina) and North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T; Greensboro) and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) has chosen Carl Zeiss (Jena, Germany) to supply a suite of advanced charged-particle-beam microscopes. Included is the first Orion Plus helium-ion-microscope ever installed in the Southeastern U.S., the company noted.

"Our objective is to become a world class educational and technical institution, with an infrastructure that includes the advanced instruments needed to support leading-edge fundamental and applied research in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering," said James Ryan, dean of the JSNN. "One of the core essentials for this infrastructure is a set of microscopy and analysis instruments that enables us to see and analyze materials at the nano level."

Ryan called the Orion Plus helium-ion-microscope a true "impact technology," and noted that it holds the world record for scanning electron and ion microscopy resolution. "This revolutionary instrument is enabling research in a wide variety of nanobiomedical and nanoenvironmental science areas beyond the limitations of conventional electron microscopy," he said.

In addition to the Orion Plus helium-ion-microscope, JSNN will be acquiring three additional electron microscopes from Carl Zeiss: an EVO multi-purpose scanning electron microscope (SEM) that is also known as an "environmental SEM" and will enable examination of biological samples without metallic coating; a Libra 120 Plus energy-filter transmission electron microscope for high resolution study of nanostructures coupled with chemical analysis capability; and an Auriga CrossBeam FIB/SEM workstation, a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope with Focused Ion Beam to enable high resolution examination of samples as well as in-situ sample preparation.

The Carl Zeiss microscopes are scheduled for installation at JSNN in the coming months on the South Campus of the Gateway University Research Park, being jointly developed by NC A&T and UNCG.

• TR Design (Andover, Massachusetts), a design firm that focuses on the medical device market, said it is working with LightLab Imaging (Westford, Massachusetts) to revitalize and implement the company's corporate brand. LightLab is a developer of Optical Coherence Tomography, a high-resolution imaging modality that applies advanced photonics to medical imaging. TR Design said it is responsible for directing LightLab through the brand development and product messaging processes, in addition to managing and implementing the materials that help bring the brand to life.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego) reported new agreements for batteries and battery products have been awarded to Procter & Gamble Distributing (Cincinnati) and Alpha Source (Milwaukee).

Effective Aug. 1, the agreements are available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.