A Medical Device Daily

Ivera Medical (San Diego) reported signing an exclusive license agreement with BD (Becton, Dickinson; Franklin Lakes, New Jersey) for the worldwide rights to selected BD-issued and pending patents for an intravenous (IV) port protector designed to reduce the potential for healthcare-acquired bloodstream infections.

"This license agreement between our two companies confirms our mutual commitment to assist healthcare providers in their efforts to reduce bloodstream infections. We believe a significant number of these infections are caused by touch or airborne contamination of needleless IV ports," said Bob Rogers, CEO of Ivera.

Healthcare-acquired bloodstream infections dramatically increase a patient's hospital length of stay, potential mortality and the overall cost of care, according to a recently released study by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.

Every year in the U.S., healthcare-acquired bloodstream infections are estimated to cost the healthcare system over $5 billion.

"The licensing agreement between BD and Ivera broadens our existing patent applications and removes potential patent issues so we can move forward with the worldwide marketing and sales of the Curos Port Protector," said Jack Saladow, Ivera's VP of marketing and sales.

In other agreements/contracts news:

• B. Braun Medical (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) reported it has entered into a contract with Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego), effective Feb. 1, 2009. Premier's members, a network of some 2,000 hospitals and 53,000 healthcare facilities, will benefit from the investment in automation and increased capacity of B. Braun's comprehensive portfolio of IV therapy products and solutions.

The agreement comes on the heels of a contract between the two organizations last fall for B. Braun's Introcan Safety IV Catheters. The passive Introcan Safety IV Catheter is designed to minimize accidental needlesticks without requiring user activation. The passive design eliminates risk of inadvertent activation, while offering a short learning curve with minimal in-service training.

• Corgenix Medical (Denver) said it has partnered with BG Medicine (BGM; (Waltham, Massachusetts) so that Corgenix' AtherOx products will be included in studies conducted by BG Medicine to predict near-term risk of first myocardial infarction.

Under the terms of the collaboration agreement, Corgenix will provide several of its products for the studies conducted by BGM, including the IgG Anti-AtherOx Kit, which is currently FDA-cleared, as well as the investigational Anti-AtherOx IgM and AtherOx kits. Corgenix may use the data generated by BG Medicine with the AtherOx technology products for regulatory and commercialization purposes in exchange for certain considerations.

• EmpowER Systems (Oakbrook, Illinois), has partnered with ExitCare (Lake Elmo, Minnesota) to offer ExitCare's Discharge Instruction information.

"We are very excited to partner with ExitCare because of their reputation in the industry, eight different languages and enterprise-wide solution that will allow us to meet our current customers' needs, as well as expand into other care settings," said CEO Kimberly Alise.

"The EmpowER – ExitCare partnership will provide our clients with the user-friendliness of EmpowER ED as well as the strong discharge instruction content ExitCare is known for." She said. "By adding ExitCare's patient education documents as an integrated solution with EmpowER ED, we will answer the growing demand for consumer healthcare information."

• Nueterra Healthcare (Leawood, Kansas) has chosen to implement McKesson (San Francisco) IT solutions in three community hospitals that it is building. Nueterra selected the Paragon community healthcare information system (HIS) to provide integrated, comprehensive electronic health records (EHR) and financial management systems for each hospital. Additionally the hospitals will implement Horizon Medical Imaging picture archiving and communications system (PACS) to provide electronic access to medical images and reports.

The three hospitals — in Great Bend, Kansas; McKinney, Texas; and Fremont, California — are the first community hospitals to be developed and managed by Nueterra.

• Oco (Waltham, Massachusetts) said that Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, California) has selected Oco's business intelligence solution to provide advanced reporting and analytics.

The company's Inventory Management module will be deployed in Beckman Coulter's Services business to enhance global visibility into key business data needed to reduce costs and improve customer experience. Oco's solution will integrate data from disparate source systems to identify service supply chain performance, and inventory levels across multiple geographies, organizations and product lines.

• RemitDATA (Memphis, Tennessee) reported that Oncology Metrics (Dallas) has selected RemitDATA to provide reimbursement tools and custom benchmarking metrics to its oncology practice members.

Under terms of the exclusive agreement, Oncology Metrics is offering RemitDATA's tools to the Oncology Circle, as a value-added service, to help improve reimbursement process efficiencies, enhance best-practices and increase practice profitability. The tools will be used as a complement to Oncology Metrics current knowledge-based products and services and help accelerate their quest to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment.