A Medical Device Daily

Palomar Medical Technologies (Burlington, Massachusetts) has reported the termination of its international distribution agreement with Q-MED (Uppsala, Sweden). The international distribution agreement was originally entered into in January 2008 with the intention that Q-MED would eventually be responsible for the marketing, advertising, promotion, sale and distribution of Palomar's professional products for aesthetic treatments outside North America.

Due to the downturn in the worldwide economic environment, Q-MED's efforts are being focused on its own product line of dermal fillers. Both Palomar and Q-MED agreed that Palomar will be better served by separately continuing to expand its existing distribution channel.

Palomar CEO Joseph Caruso said, "Although we are choosing to end our distribution agreement, this was a good learning experience and we have forged a positive relationship with Q-MED that may be beneficial in the future. We believe that during these challenging economic times we will be better positioned with full control of our international distribution."

Caruso said the company has signed up many new distributors over the past 12 months, "and [we] continue to work closely with all of our distributors to help maximize their sales efforts. Territories outside North America should continue to provide growth opportunities for us as we expand our efforts."

In other agreements/contracts news:

• WaferGen Biosystems (Fremont, California), a developer of gene expression, genotyping, cell biology and stem cell research systems, reported signing a research collaboration with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas) for the SmartChip Real-Time PCR System.

Under terms of the collaboration, UT Southwestern will conduct novel research projects using the SmartChip Real-Time PCR System in order to identify and validate gene expression biomarkers related to wound healing. Additionally, researchers will aim to examine the impact the identified biomarkers have on patients' response to treatment.

• Science Applications International (San Diego) said the company has been awarded a task order by the Department of Defense (McLean, Virginia) to provide technical services in support of the Defense Health Information Management Composite Health Care System/Cache 2.

The task order has a one-year base period of performance, a single one-year option and a total value of more than $19 million if the option is exercised. Work will be performed primarily in Falls Church, Virginia, and San Diego, California.

• Premier (San Diego) said that new agreements for OR integration/automation systems have been awarded to ConMed (Utica, New York), Olympus America (Center Valley, Pennsylvania), Skytron (Grand Rapids, Michigan), STERIS (Mentor, Ohio) and Stryker (Kalamazoo, Michigan).

Effective Jan. 1, the 24-month agreements are available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.