A Medical Device Daily

The Sorin Group (Milan, Italy) and Greatbatch (Clarence, New York) reported the execution of a letter of intent that will leverage Greatbatch's eM-able technology in the Sorin Group's future cardiac rhythm management systems.

Catherine Picard, VP of R&D at Sorin Group, said, "We are very excited by the opportunity to leverage Greatbatch's eM-able technology to accelerate our MRI program and deliver MRI conditional systems to patients and physicians worldwide in the shortest possible time."

Many patients implanted with a pacemaker or a defibrillator cannot take advantage of an MRI scan, because energy from the scanner can change how a device controls the heart, damaging the device or injuring the heart tissue surrounding it.

MRI conditional approved devices are critical to allow patients with active implantable medical devices to safely have an MRI for diagnostic evaluation.

The Sorin Group is a leader in the development of medical technologies for cardiac surgery, offers innovative therapies for cardiac rhythm dysfunctions, interventional cardiology and the treatment of chronic kidney diseases.

Greatbatch is a manufacturer of products used in implantable medical devices for the cardiac rhythm management, neuromodulation, vascular and orthopedic markets.

In other agreements:

• Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, California) and Signature Genomic Laboratories (Signature; Washington) reported they have signed a long-term supply agreement in which Agilent will supply custom oligonucleotide microarrays to Signature and its customers based on the Signature-designed SignatureChip Oligo Solution (SignatureChipOS). Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The SignatureChipOS is designed for the detection of chromosome abnormalities in individuals with mental retardation/developmental delay, autism and congenital anomalies. The 105,000-feature, 60-mer microarray covers more than 150 syndromes, the subtelomeric and pericentromeric regions, and more than 500 genes in important developmental pathways.

Signature Genomic Laboratories, founded in 2003, said it was the first laboratory to provide microarray-based cytogenetic diagnostics with its proprietary SignatureChip and is the leader in providing microarray-based chromosome analysis.

• GE Healthcare IT, a division of GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin) and a provider of clinical, financial and administrative information technology solutions, reported a partnership agreement with M*Modal (Pittsburgh), a provider of advanced speech understanding solutions, to deliver the next generation of radiology reporting technology. The announcement was made at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) conference in Seattle.

With the aim to transition the industry from speech recognition to speech understanding, the agreement will incorporate M*Modal's advanced speech technology, AnyModal Conversational Documentation Services (CDS), as part of GE's Centricity RIS-IC Reporting module. The solution will aim to benefit physicians and radiologists with higher process efficiency, more accurate clinical documentation and dictation without changes in workflow. In addition, the technology is designed to continually learn, so the more it is used, the more accurate it becomes.

By combining AnyModal CDS within Centricity RIS-IC, the companies said physicians now will be able to dictate without any change in workflow. The patented speech understanding services transform the spoken dictation into a draft report, automatically structured and encoded according to the healthcare provider's documentation rules. Documents are generated in a semantically interoperable HL7 CDA format to allow for streamlined report sharing between practitioners and facilities.

GE's Centricity RIS-IC is a radiology workflow application that provides a broad spectrum of capabilities for managing the administrative and clinical requirements of a radiology department. Its feature set is designed to increase overall productivity while enhancing clinical staff's ability to deliver excellence in patient care.

M*Modal offers on-demand conversational documentation services that help healthcare providers capture discrete clinical information from dictation to generate complete and timely electronic medical records.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) has awarded a group buy to GE Healthcare for diagnostic imaging products and point-of-sale service agreements, including computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, cardiovascular imaging, molecular imaging, ultrasound, general X-ray and bone densitometry.

The group buy program is available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance through June 29.

• Del Global Technologies (Franklin Park, Illinois) said it has signed a three-year agreement with Vision Imaging Partners (Cherry Hill, New Jersey) to distribute Del Global's digital and general radiographic imaging equipment for the medical, chiropractic and veterinary markets.

Joseph Flies, VP of operations for Del Medical Systems Group, said, "With the Vision agreement, smaller buyers will enjoy the purchasing power that large medical center cooperatives and acute-care hospital networks have."