A Medical Device Daily

Orchestrate Healthcare Consulting (Greenwood Village, Colorado) said it has signed a contract with ProHealth Care (Waukesha, Wisconsin) for application integration consulting services.

"Orchestrate Healthcare provided a highly skilled analyst to support our system interface," said Ralph Tatman, a spokesman for ProHealth. "We needed someone who could be on-call and available at a moment's notice, and Orchestrate Healthcare was able to provide that person, even from outside the state."

He added, "Interface analysts in the healthcare industry are in high demand, and I am impressed with Orchestrate Healthcare's ability to provide such professional solutions. We have over 100 interfaces here, any of which can be considered high priority at any time, and the expertise provided by Orchestrate Healthcare has been invaluable to my company."

In other grants/contracts new:

• Hocoma (Volketswil, Switzerland) reported that West Gables Rehabilitation Hospital (Miami) has added the Lokomat system to its line of therapy services. The Lokomat uses robotic locomotion therapy on patients suffering from strokes, multiple sclerosis, brain injury and other neurological disorders. The equipment uses precise body weight support to help patients optimize correct gait or walking movements. This added support provides therapists with additional "hands" to help patients achieve better accuracy and faster progress in their therapy.

• Cook Medical (Bloomington, Indiana) said it will have a significantly expanded vendor relationship with HealthTrust Purchasing Group (Brentwood, Tennessee). Cook is now contracted to supply medical devices in the areas of peripheral diagnostics, peripheral intervention, vena cava filters and peripheral stents to HealthTrust's member facilities.

• Novo Innovations (Alpharetta, Georgia) reported a three-year agreement with Southwest Washington Medical Center (SWMC; Vancouver, Washington) for Novo's agent-based software has already fully interfaced SWMC's systems with four practices' electronic medical record systems. Fourteen new practices are being interfaced, with more implementations planned.

Electronic delivery of laboratory results and transcribed reports through the Novo system are the first functionalities offered by SWMC. The hospital intends to expand the range of information it can exchange electronically to include radiology reports, lab orders and additional information that is valuable to SWMC's practice population.

• Alpha II (Tallahassee, Florida) said it has signed a contract with NCEB–Practice Management Solutions (Sheffield Village, Ohio). NCEB already has begun using Alpha II's ClaimStaker software to verify clients' claims and edit them prior to submission.

NCEB's primary objective with ClaimStaker is to improve the rate of claims accepted on the first pass for its clients, who represent a wide range of specialties.