A Medical Device Daily

Viaspace (Pasadena, California), subsidiary Ionfinity has been awarded a $750,000 Phase II contract for its proposal titled "Advanced Robotic Detection of Chemical Agents, Toxic Industrial Gases, and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED)s for Force Health Protection," submitted to the Army Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program.

This competitively selected two-year contract will result in a field demonstration of high-sensitivity detection and analysis capability for chemical agents and explosives that threaten U.S. forces. In addition to developing products for the $55 billion security industry, the new sensor technology is expected to have commercial applications in environmental monitoring, agriculture and medicine.

Ionfinity's contract is to develop a chemical agent sensor through a joint collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, General Dynamics, Sionex and Imaginative Technologies. The chemical sensor system consists of a new and powerful detector called a Differential Mobility Spectrometer, a novel "soft-ionization" method that does not fragment or multiply-ionize sampled species, and a micro-gas chromatograph for confirmation and enhanced detection capability.

The goal of the effort is to demonstrate a commercialized prototype of an enhanced version of the General Dynamics JUNO system that is inexpensive, compact, totally integrated and very rugged.

The new detection and analysis system can be used to identify chemical and biowarfare agents, industrial toxic gases, and chemical components of Improvised Explosive Devices in air, water or solids. It is designed to be integrated with unmanned ground vehicles for medical force health protection and combat casualty care missions.

In other agreements/contracts news:

Cambridge Consultants (Cambridge, UK) has joined the Continua Health Alliance (Boston), a consortium of healthcare and technology companies collaborating to establish an eco-system of interoperable personal health systems that will empower people and organizations to better manage health and wellness.

As a member of Continua, Cambridge Consultants offers its Vena platform, a low cost single chip communication solution for health devices, with the capability to deliver both wired and wireless connectivity to health devices.

HMS (New York) reported it has won a competitive procurement to continue providing third party liability recovery and cost avoidance services to the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS), Department for Medicaid Services. The contract has a two-year term and the commonwealth has the option to renew it for one additional two-year period. The new contract also allows HMS to provide Medicaid Program Integrity services to the commonwealth.

PGBA (Columbia, South Carolina) reported the receipt of a contract award from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Washington) for medical claims adjudication services. The contract includes a two-year base period and three one-year option periods for an estimated aggregate value of $7.3 million.

Contract claim volumes will be phased in over a four-year period. The contract will include claims submitted for the health care services for federal inmates from facilities located throughout the contiguous U.S., Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

The claims will come from hospitals and other healthcare services professionals who provide services to inmates who must be transported out of the prisons and into the community for care. Until now, the Bureau of Prisons handled its own claims processing.