A Medical Device Daily

Lumedx (Oakland, California) and Mennen Medical (Horsham, Pennsylvania) reported signing a partnership agreement to provide a total, integrated cath lab data solution and seamless stream of hemodynamic cardiovascular patient data.

The agreement is part of both companies' desire to complement their individual product lines so that their mutual customers will enjoy a consolidated cath lab solution. Combining the CVIS and PACS software modalities of Lumedx with Mennen Medical's suite of hardware products for the cath lab, including its new hemodynamic system, the Horizon XVu, its patient monitoring and its EP recording systems into one integrated system will provide a unique market solution.

This partnership is intended to help heart centers to perform cath lab procedures, using an efficient and flexible workflow and continuous clinical patient data from the holding area, throughout the procedure room and into the recovery room.

Mennen Medical's new XVu System is embedded with an interface and analysis system. Combined with windows and an intuitive graphic interface, the system enables various layouts to suit both cardiac and peripheral angiography procedures, including the most advanced pediatric package that is available in the market.

Mennen's front-end vital signs acquisition unit, the CFE, with its small size, allows it to be rail-mounted on the procedure table for maximum space utilization and comfort. It is designed to operate under the demanding workload conditions that exist in both the cardiac and peripheral angiography environments while offering very high reliability.

"This strategic partnership between Lumedx and Mennen Medical will provide cath labs with the widest and strongest integrated data solution that is currently offered in the U.S. market and it takes advantage of the different technologies that exists in each of the companies," said Angelia Adzic, president of Mennen Medical in the U.S. "We hope that the next stage of this partnership will be to take this powerful solution global."

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Mediwatch (Warwickshire, UK) has signed a five-year agreement for the worldwide distribution of PSAwatch, its point-of-care total PSA measuring system for prostate cancer, with Inverness Medical Innovations (Waltham, Massachusetts). Inverness has an extensive global sales force which will complement Mediwatch's own worldwide distribution network and provide the company with more market reach.

• DR Systems (San Diego) reported four new contracts, including two data migrations from legacy PACS, totaling almost $1.57 million. The four facilities are Hillsdale Community Health Center (Hillsdale, Michigan), Salem Clinic (Salem, Oregon), Contemporary Imaging Associates (Livonia, Michigan) and Advanced Radiology Imaging Associates (Fort Myers, Florida).

"Had these new customers selected a PACS from a different company, they would probably have to maintain five or more different systems and interfaces and deal with five different vendors," said Rick Porritt, President and CEO of DR Systems. "In addition to the complexities of managing all that, they would also have a PACS that cost more and did less than the one they got from DR Systems," Porritt said. "We provided them one unified system that will be a lasting solution while raising their profitability and simplifying their tech support."

• BioImagene (Cupertino, California) and Visuvi (Redwood City, California) reported a partnership for PathSearch, a visual search product for digital pathology. PathSearch enables visual search for PathXchange community pathology portal and Virtuoso end-to-end digital pathology solutions. This partnership will allow pathologists to search with images without the need for detours via meta-data, potentially incorrect mark-ups and tags.

• AMDL (Tustin, California) reported that it has entered into a collaborative agreement with Mayo Clinic (Rochester, New York) to conduct a clinical study for the validation of AMDL's FDA-approved DR-70 (FDP) cancer test.

Through this validation study, AMDL and Mayo Clinic will perform clinical diagnostic testing to compare AMDL's DR-70 (FDP) cancer test with a new test. The primary goal of the study is to determine whether DR-70 (FDP) serves as a higher-performing test to its existing predicate test and can lead to improved accuracy in the detection of early-stage cancers. For FDA approval on the new test, AMDL intends to perform an additional study to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness in monitoring colorectal cancer.

• MedAssets (Atlanta) said it has expanded its revenue cycle management services agreement with the Hospital Division of Kindred Healthcare (Louisville, Kentucky). Software and service solutions have been added to the expanded agreement in order to help Kindred's Hospital Division track, appeal and recover underpayments or lost revenue from payers. The expanded agreement includes the implementation of MedAssets' revenue cycle management software and service solutions to improve the monitoring, identification and recovery of reimbursement underpayments from payers.

• Centene (St. Louis) said its wholly-owned subsidiary, Celtic Group, through a joint venture with Caritas Christi Health Care (Boston), was awarded a contract to manage healthcare services for Commonwealth Care members in Massachusetts. Effective July 1, 2009, the two entities will serve the Central, Northern, Boston and Southern regions operating as Commonwealth Family Health Plan.