A Medical Device Daily

Health Robotics (Bozen, Italy) and ICU Medical (San Clemente, California) reported the culmination of the development work both companies undertook to enable CytoCare customers to use the Clave Needle-Free Connector around the world.

Based on customer demand, the companies entered into an agreement in mid-2008 to modify their respective products in order to enable the safe use of the Clave Connector for the purpose of spiking IV Bags before their introduction into CytoCare for hazardous drug preparation and compounding. General availability of their combined compatible solutions is expected about next March.

"We are very pleased to have worked with ICU Medical in the development of the first compatible needle-free connector to be utilized with our IV Robotic Solutions. This is especially important in the U.S. and Western Europe, where the demand for this combined solution encouraged us to quickly move in this direction. The Clave was introduced in 1992 as the first one-piece, closed, needle-free connector," said Werner Rainer, CEO of Health Robotics.

"Ever since our team visited the University of Colorado [Health Sciences Center] in Denver earlier this year and witnessed how CytoCare compounded chemotherapy IV medications, we realized that we were witnessing the future of hazardous drug compounding and decided to work with Health Robotics," said ICU Medical CEO George Lopez, MD.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• Healthcare Management Systems (Nashville, Tennessee) said it was selected by Kimball Health Services (Kimball, Nebraska) to supply a full system of integrated clinical and financial software. Kimball has some healthcare technology in place already, but with the growing needs of the community, they knew they needed a system and a business partner that would grow with them into the future.

HMS' advanced healthcare technology tools — paperless initiatives, 24/7 online access to information, CPOE (Computerized Physician Order Entry) and electronic medication administration with barcoding at the bedside — will help them to achieve that goal.

• Premier (San Diego) reported that a new agreement has been awarded to Olympus Surgical & Industrial America (Orangeburg, New York) in the ultrasonic cutting and coagulation technologies product category. The 24-month agreement, effective Jan. 1, is available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.

• rL Solutions (Cambridge, Massachusetts) said that Atrius Health (Newton, Massachusetts) has selected rL Solutions as its vendor for patient safety and quality of care. Atrius Health is an alliance of five non-profit medical groups in Massachusetts. Realizing the benefits of an automated reporting system for improving patient safety, Atrius has chosen to deploy rL Solutions' Risk MonitorPro to capture, report on and analyze incidents and events.