A Medical Device Daily

Encorium Group (Wayne, Pennsylvania), a multinational contract research organization (CRO) that provides design, development, and management capabilities for clinical trials and patient registries to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, reported $3.2 million of additional new business contracts for Europe and North America.

The therapeutic areas included in these awards are oncology, asthma, diabetes, rheumatology, and immunology/vaccines, the company said. Services to be provided include consulting, regulatory affairs, project management, field monitoring, and medical monitoring/writing.

Revenue recognition for many of these contracts will begin in the current quarter, with the remainder expected to occur on a proportional performance basis as services are performed on each project, according to Encorium.

In other grants/contracts news:

• Cigna HealthCare (Bloomfield, Connecticut) reported that it is one of two companies to have been awarded a contract to provide healthcare benefits to Georgias state employees. The contract becomes effective Jan. 1, 2009.

"We are extremely excited about the opportunity to work with the State of Georgia and offer our innovative health programs, tools and resources to more people across the state," said Scott Evelyn, president and general manager of Cigna HealthCares Georgia and Alabama markets. "We believe we can be part of helping state employees improve their health. Everyday we strive to give individuals useful information to help them make good health decisions. An educated and an engaged individual can be an effective agent of change in todays health care environment."

New Cicna members from the State of Georgia will be able to receive in-patient and out-patient services from an expanded and comprehensive network inclusive of 147 hospitals and 14,700 physicians in virtually every metropolitan and rural community in the state.

Cigna HealthCare is a provider of employee benefit services and programs, such as medical, dental, behavioral health, and pharmacy benefits plans and coverage.

• Splinternet Holdings (Norwalk, Connecticut), a homeland security technology firm, said it has been selected to deploy security systems and technology upgrades for a group of hospitals, doctors offices and administration buildings in the Midwest under a subcontract with Argus Technologies (Jacksonville, Florida).

Splinternets gamma radiation detection network, DefenTect, will protect hospital perimeters and portals wherever radiological treatment material is stored, according to the company.

The company will implement overall technology systems upgrades, including computer and physical security networks at healthcare alliance locations. Splinternet threat awareness solutions are compatible with and overlay other data-related systems at customer facilities.

Systems work will begin in June. The cost of the project is $1.4 million, the company noted.

Argus provides information technology services to hospitals and healthcare communities including data integration and business process management tools.

• Derma Sciences (Princeton, New Jersey), a provider of advanced wound-care products, said it has reached an agreement with a major unnamed Canadian retail pharmacy chain, and expects to sign a contract "in the near future."

According to the company, the terms call for minimum purchases of $2 million each year for three years, totaling at least $6 million. The $2 million a year will be comprised of a mix of Medihoney antimicrobial dressings, private label adhesive strips and traditional wound-care dressings, the company said. The retailer will have the exclusive rights to distribute Dermas Medihoney antimicrobial products throughout Canada. The company said it received clearance from Health Canada in 3Q07 to market and sell its Medihoney antimicrobial dressings with active Leptospermum Honey.

Initial orders of the product line are expected to take place in December, Derma said, and initial orders for the other products are anticipated to begin in spring 2009.

• Alsius (Irvine, California), a provider of intravascular temperature management (IVTM) therapies for critically ill patients, said it was awarded a three-year contract with HealthTrust Purchasing Group (Brentwood, Tennessee) to provide IVTM products to the group purchasing organizations network of more than 1,400 not-for-profit and for-profit acute-care hospitals.

Alsius IVTM consists of the CoolGard 3000, Thermogard and Thermogard XP systems and a family of single-use catheters, including the Cool Line, Icy, Fortius and Quattro catheters. The catheters are inserted into a major vein through a patients neck or groin, and circulate cool or warm saline in a closed-loop through balloons that surround the catheters.

According to the company, this approach decreases or increases core temperature from the inside of the body out toward the exterior, allowing for faster control of a patients core body temperature, with greater efficiency and precision, compared to conventional external temperature management products such as cooling and warming blankets and ice packs.

• Amerinet (St. Louis) said it has agreed to serve as the exclusive GPO for the Brownsville Doctors Hospital (Brownsville, Texas). It said the three-year agreement would focus on Total Spend Management Solutions, including cost reduction, contract evaluation and implementation. n