A Medical Device Daily

Olympus America (Center Valley, Pennsylvania) has signed an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, Massachusetts) to enhance Olympus’s laboratory automation offering to U.S. customers with a comprehensive open-track automation solution for clinical laboratories.

The new product offering will complement existing Olympus Lab Automation products, including the OLA2500. The agreement between the companies will allow laboratory professionals to create best-of-breed comprehensive solutions incorporating Olympus AU-series clinical chemistry and immunoassay analyzers including various third-party analyzers.

The agreement gives Olympus the right to distribute Thermo Fisher’s TCAutomation product line, a fully featured, track-based laboratory automation product line, in the Americas. Olympus will handle sales and marketing and provide primary-level service and support of the automation products.

In other agreements/contracts news, Western Maryland Health System (WMHS; Cumberland) has expanded its relationship with the Premier (San Diego) healthcare alliance by agreeing to implement Premier’s SafteySurveillor to prevent healthcare-associated infections and optimize antibiotic use, thereby protecting patients more effectively and reducing hospital costs.

The hospital will use SafetySurveillor’s infection control and pharmacy modules at its two campuses. More than 200 hospitals have chosen Premier’s web-based solution to enhance patient care, making SafetySurveillor the most widely adopted infection control solution during the past 18 months, according to the company.

Tom Dowdel, COO of the health system, said, “We are committed to the Premier healthcare alliance and use several Premier Informatics tools already. We are definitely satisfied with results so we are excited to further engage with Premier by selecting SafetySurveillor. It will be a key part of our efforts to make infection prevention a top priority in our facilities.”

Premier Epidemiologist/Director of Infection Prevention Salah Qutaishat, PhD, said, “We welcome Western Maryland Health System to our ever-growing harm avoidance efforts. The Premier healthcare alliance is committed to helping hospitals implement innovative infection prevention methods to create safer hospital environments and enhance the quality of patient care.”