A Medical Device Daily

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said that First Coast Service Options (FCSO; Jacksonville, Florida) has been awarded a contract of up to five years for the combined administration of Part A and Part B Medicare claims payment in Florida, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands.

"With this award, CMS continues its progress in reengineering the way in which the government contracts for claims administration for the largest part of the Medicare program. CMS is seeking the best value, from a cost and technical perspective for this critical function," said acting CMS Administrator Kerry Weems. "This is another step toward improving services to beneficiaries and providers who are in the Medicare fee-for-service benefit plan."

FCSO will serve as the first point of contact for the processing and payment of Medicare fee-for-service claims from hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, physicians and other healthcare practitioners in Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• To prevent counterfeit products from entering the healthcare supply chain, GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin) has selected Axway's (Scottsdale, Arizona) Synchrony ePedigree solution. The hosted solution will provide GE Healthcare's customers – healthcare professionals serving patients in clinics and hospitals - online access to GE Healthcare's medical imaging and information products. Doctors and clinicians can receive, sign and authenticate the pedigrees, thereby validating the chain of custody when accepting shipments to help prevent product tampering and diversion.

• Agion Technologies (Wakefield, Massachusetts), a maker of silver-based, antimicrobial solutions, and DuPont Powder Coatings (Darlington, UK) reported that Agion will be the exclusive antimicrobial solution for Alesta powder coatings. Designed for areas where clean is critical, Alesta AM powder coatings with Agion antimicrobial is a safe, effective technology to combat the growth of problematic microbes. Powder coatings made with Agion's silver antimicrobial compound will protect surfaces from microbes such as bacteria, fungi, yeast, mold and mildew.

• Sequenom (San Diego) said that it has acquired exclusive worldwide rights (excluding Hong Kong) to digital PCR and other noninvasive prenatal diagnostic intellectual property from The Chinese University (Hong Kong). These newly acquired rights expand Sequenom's existing, broad intellectual property portfolio of noninvasive prenatal diagnostic methods using fetal nucleic acids obtained from a maternal sample. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Accuray (Sunnyvale, California) and Impac Medical Systems (also Sunnyvale) reported that they are collaborating to develop inter-operability between the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System and the Mosaiq oncology information system. Using DICOM standard interface protocols, both treatment plan and delivery information from the CyberKnife System will automatically feed directly into the Impac electronic medical record.

• WellDoc Communications (Baltimore) is partnering with AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals (London) to educate patients about the importance of their medicine in asthma control. As part of its patient support program AstraZeneca's respiratory franchise will use WellDoc's web- and mobile-based asthma solution, including virtual messenger, air quality and pollen count alerts as well as online patient support tools, allowing patients to manage their condition, consistent with the treatment plan of the patient's physician, throughout their day and in real time.

WellDoc is building on its successful mobile diabetes management software and is extending its platform to support other chronic conditions. WellDoc's asthma application includes many features that benefit patients, including reminders, alerts, medication data capture and pollen and air quality data.

• ProVentive (Boston) reported that Coventry Health Care (Bethesda, Maryland) has selected ProVentive for its pilot project in identifying and managing cardiovascular risk.

Coventry, providing a full range of group and individual health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid programs, and coverage for specialty services including dental services, will deploy ProVentive's solutions to identify health plan members who are most likely to develop adverse cardiovascular clinical conditions, and will use the application as a base from which to launch its comprehensive Heart Failure pilot program.

• MannKind (Valencia, California) and Pfizer (New York) said that MannKind will transition certain Exubera patients with a continuing need for inhaled insulin to MannKind's inhaled insulin product, Technosphere Insulin, an investigational product that has recently completed phase III clinical trials.

In October 2007, Pfizer announced that it would stop marketing Exubera (insulin human (rDNA origin)) Inhalation Powder because it did not meet customers' needs or Pfizer's financial expectations. Since that time, Exubera patients have been transitioning to other diabetes therapies, although there remains a small number of patients with a continuing medical need for inhaled insulin. Pfizer began discussions with MannKind to give these patients access to Technosphere Insulin. Pfizer will reimburse some of MannKind's costs relating to the transition of patients.