A Medical Device Daily

Orthofix International (Boston) reported agreements with the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF; Edison, New Jersey) for final development and distribution of a stem cell-based allograft.

Orthofix said it will fund a milestone-based program to develop a bone growth matrix designed to provide beneficial properties comparable to an autograft in spinal and orthopedic surgeries. After completion of development, the companies will work together in a separate commercialization agreement.

MTF will focus on the procurement of donor tissue, the processing of the bone growth matrix, and the fulfillment of orders received. Orthofix has exclusive global marketing rights for the new allograft and will receive a marketing fee from MTF.

The company said it plans for the new matrix to be launched in the U.S. during 2H09.

Orthofix develops minimally invasive surgical, and non-surgical, products for the spine, orthopedic, and sports medicine markets.

MTF bills itself as the nation's largest full-service tissue organization.

In other Agreements/contracts:

Thomson Reuters (New York) and CareEvolution (Ann Arbor, Michigan) said they are working together to produce an application that groups patient data by disease or medical episode. This Web-based "medical episode grouper" (MEG) provides current patient information organized at the point of care to help physicians make medical decisions and enhance disease management and quality of care.

Output from the MEG, developed by Thomson Reuters, will be integrated into CareEvolution's clinical cockpit to deliver patient medical histories of all medications and treatments. CareEvolution uses a federated data model to pull patient data from different sources into a single view. Under this collaboration, it will use the web-based MEG to streamline information that represents a patient's lifetime of healthcare across pharmacy, laboratory, acute care, and ambulatory care settings.

CareEvolution makes health interoperability solutions. Thomson Reuters is a healthcare information company.

Saint Vincent Health System (Erie, Pennsylvania) said it has chosen to upgrade and extend its clinical systems with the Horizon Clinicals Care Team Release from McKesson (San Francisco).

With a "one-patient, one-care team, one -plan" approach to support care delivery and care planning, the Care Team Release unifies the medical and interdisciplinary care plans, driving evidence-based practice.

Saint Vincent said it is planning an electronic health record (EHR) that will be used to facilitate communication among the entire care team and provide easy access to patient information.

Both hospitals in the Saint Vincent system, Saint Vincent Health Center and Westfield Hospital, will upgrade their electronic patient record storage technology to McKesson's Horizon Patient Folder document imaging solution.