A Medical Device Daily

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University (the Bronx, New York) and Montefiore Medical Center (also the Bronx) a Clinical and Translational Science Award totaling $22 million over five years.

The grant will support the new Einstein-Montefiore Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), whose goal is to collaboratively expedite the transfer of research discoveries at Einstein and Montefiore to patient care.

The grant will support the development of new methods and approaches to clinical and translational research; improve training and mentoring to ensure that new investigators can navigate the increasingly complex research system; design new and improved clinical research informatics tools; assemble interdisciplinary teams that cover the complete spectrum of medical research; and, forge new partnerships with private and public healthcare organizations.

The NIH also reported that Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI; San Diego) is receiving a $20 million Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) this year.

STSI, led by Eric Topol, MD, is a collaborative program between the Scripps Research Institute and Scripps Health, partnering with a number of institutions in San Diego.

Scripps Translational Science Institute joins a national consortium of institutions working to accelerate clinical and translational research, in order to catapult scientific discoveries that improve medicine. To date, STSI is one of only four California programs to receive CTSA funding and the first in Southern California. It also is the only program to be selected to the consortium that is not a university.

The consortium created by CTSA members was formed in 2006 and currently includes 38 organizations across the nation, including STSI. When the consortium inducts its final member institutions in 2012, it will be comprised of 60 institutions, each focused on accelerating research that impacts health.

In other grants/contracts news:

• Haemonetics (Braintree, Massachusetts) and Octapharm (Hoboken, New Jersey) reported the signing of a multi-year supply contract appointing Haemonetics as Octapharma's preferred provider of plasma collection technology in the U.S.

Octapharma will use Haemonetics' technology to separate plasma from donor blood at its U.S. plasma collection centers. Plasma is the source of numerous proteins used for drug development and therapeutic purposes. These proteins include albumin, clotting factors, and intravenous immunoglobulin.

Haemonetics is a global healthcare company focused on providing innovative blood management solutions for our customers.

Octapharma is an independent plasma fractionation specialist, and said it is the largest privately owned plasma products company in the world.

• Keane (San Ramon, California) a $1 billion-plus global services firm that specializes in enabling transformation of its clients' business and IT functions, reported that it has signed a $1.5 million five-year contract with Golden Living, a network of long-term-care facilities that includes 331 skilled-nursing facilities and 19 assisted-living facilities in 22 states. As part of the agreement, Keane will install eCharting and ePrescribing components of its NetSolutions clinical application.

Keane's eCharting and ePrescribing solutions will provide Golden Living with a safer, more efficient approach to order management, replacing manual processes traditionally used to administer medication and treatments. This implementation will give physicians at Golden Living immediate access to patient information using a secure, browser-based technology at the point of service.

eCharting and ePrescribing are components of the Keane NetSolutions family of browser-based financial and clinical software. Built on .Net technology from Microsoft and packed with proven features, Keane NetSolutions helps long-term and post-acute-care providers boost performance, improve care delivery and accelerate productivity.

Designed to support the increasing demands of post-acute-care providers while lowering the total cost of ownership, Keane NetSolutions combines the depth of Keane's software features with the strength of web technology for improved accessibility.

Keane is a services firm that specializes in enabling transformation of its clients' business and IT functions.

• Impulse Monitoring (IMI; Columbia Maryland), a provider of intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) services to hospitals, reported that it has signed a three-year agreement with the University of Virginia Health System (UVAHS; Charlottesville).

Which includes two one-year extension options, IMI will provide UVAHS with comprehensive IONM services including IMI-qualified neurophysiologists and real-time professional oversight by an experienced physician. IONM assesses neurological function involving the brain, spinal cord and related nerve structures during surgery. Use of IONM facilitates the surgical process and can reduce surgical risk by providing alerts to surgeons of potential harm to the spinal cord or neural structures.

Impulse Monitoring provides intraoperative neuromonitoring services to hospitals and other facilities for spinal, nerve and brain-related surgeries.