A Medical Device Daily

Advanced Diamond Technologies (ADT; Romeoville, Illinois) reported that it has entered an exclusive agreement with Jarvik Heart (JHI; New York) to supply diamond coatings engineered for the blood contacting surfaces of Jarvik heart pumps presently under development.

ADT and JHI will collaborate to develop improved blood contacting surfaces using ADT's form of diamond, known as UNCD, which is both thin and exceptionally smooth, to inhibit the formation of blood clots inside the device and to reduce the need for blood thinning medications which would increase the success rate of heart pumps.

Modern rotary heart assist devices augment an ailing heart's ability to pump blood. In a relatively small percentage of patients with heart pumps, blood clots may form on the titanium or ceramic components such as rotors and bearings. If this occurs, it can reduce the ability of the device to pump enough blood, or if blood clots break free they may go to the brain and cause a stroke. Although this problem occurs less commonly than with earlier generations of heart assist devices, it is a risk with every model in use today.

"Presently, blood thinning drugs are used with all types of electric rotary blood pumps. If the UNCD coating successfully eliminates the formation of blood clots without the need for anticoagulation, this would solve one of the remaining barriers to the widespread use of heart assist devices in tens of thousands of patients dying of heart failure. I believe using ADT's UNCD on the blood contacting surfaces of the Jarvik 2000 heart pump is the most promising technology to eliminate the need for blood thinning drugs," said Robert Jarvik, MD, president/CEO of JHI, and inventor of the Jarvik 2000 heart, which has sustained a patient for 7.5 years, longer than any other artificial heart device in the world.

"We are thrilled to be working with Dr. Jarvik, a pioneer of medical device technology to save the lives of patients struggling with heart failure. For ADT, this initiative opens up previously untapped commercial applications for UNCD including artificial heart valves, cardiac stents, and other metal and ceramic components of intravascular prostheses that we are just beginning to explore," said ADT's president Neil Kane.

In other agreements and contracts news:

• Zynx Health (Los Angeles) reported an agreement with Advanced Data Systems (ADS; Maywood, New Jersey) to include Zynx evidence-based clinical decision support in MedicsDocAssistant Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Software.

Per the agreement, ADS will embed Zynx AmbulatoryCare into MedicsDocAssistant, an EMR package. Zynx AmbulatoryCare is a suite of clinical decision support content that includes evidence-based clinical recommendations, order sets, performance measure checklists, alerts and reminders. Updated every six months, the content covers more than 100 diseases and conditions.

• Paper medical records cause costly errors, potentially compromising patient care. And paper claims processing costs twice as much as electronic claims processing. Automating these processes in an electronic environment is preventative care for the pains plaguing today's healthcare organizations. As a remedy, three healthcare organizations have selected the OnBase document management solution including Lancaster General Hospital (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), OSF HealthCare (Peoria, Illinois) and Seattle Children's Hospital (Seattle).

"Healthcare organizations are under tremendous pressure to provide the best possible patient care," said Tim Tegeder, director of healthcare solutions for Hyland Software (Westlake, Ohio). "But they're being forced to do it with ever-tightening budgets. Our solution cost-effectively unites all the different types of content, from every step of the revenue and patient clinical care cycles, providing a single view of the patient record."

• Eloquest Healthcare (Ferndale, Michigan) reported that, effective immediately, the company is partnering with Onset Therapeutics (Cumberland, Rhode Island) to market Exactacain and Optase. As a part of the co-promotion agreement between the two companies, Eloquest Healthcare will bring the expertise of its sales force and marketing resources, to promote Exactacain and Optase to the acute care market.