• American Medical Technologies (AMT, Corpus Christi, Texas) reported a sales partnership with SheerVision, a provider of surgical loupes and LED head light systems for the dental, medical and veterinary markets. AMT will assume the sales, service and support functions for the FireFly LED Headlight system on behalf of SheerVision in international markets.

• Biomoda (Albuquerque, New Mexico), a maker of cancer diagnostics, reported an agreement with Medical Acoustics (Buffalo, New York) to collect lung sputum samples in a clinical study that will use Biomoda's technology for detection of early lung cancer. Medical Acoustics makes the Lung Flute, a minimally invasive, flute-shaped device that uses low frequency sound waves to help patients with natural mucus clearing. The Lung Flute will be used during a clinical program administered by New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in partnership with the New Mexico Department of Veterans Services (DVS). Biomoda will conduct the first year of the $350,000 clinical program, while New Mexico Tech and DVS will oversee the program and provide treatment to veterans testing positive for lung cancer.

• B-Line Medical (Silver Spring, Maryland) and Immersion Medical, a subsidiary of Immersion (Gaithersburg, Maryland), reported a partnership enabling Immersion to distribute an enhanced version of B-Line's SimCapture, described as "an all-in-one solution" for capturing, debriefing, assessing and centralizing multiple types of simulation encounters. Immersion, a manufacturer of virtual reality simulation devices, said it will be the first licensed third-party distributor of SimCapture andthat it will be pursuing domestic, international and government sales opportunities.

• Broadlane (Dallas) reported that it has been selected by Olympia Medical Center (Los Angeles) to provide various supply chain services under an exclusive agreement. Olympia will have access to Broadlane's national GPO portfolio of consumable supplies, equipment, pharmaceuticals and purchased services to help manage their annual spend of about $17 million. Broadlane's technology, including OnRamp (Broadlane's client portal) and BroadLink (Broadlane's e-commerce exchange), will be used to streamline purchasing.

• Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC, St. Louis) said it has signed an affiliate agreement to partner with Amerinet (St. Louis) a national healthcare group purchasing organization. LLUMC has agreed to use exclusively Amerinet's national portfolio of product and service contracts and Total Spend Management business intelligence solutions to assist in managing the facility's combined annual spend of $150 million. Additionally, Amerinet will jointly fund a full-time facility contract manager to ensure optimization of contracting services on the $1.5 billion in new construction and renovations LLUMC has planned for the next 10 years.

• Misonix (Farmingdale, New York), a developer of minimally invasive ultrasonic medical device technology for the ablation of cancer and other chronic health conditions, reported an agreement with Medline Industries (Mundelein, Illinois) for the domestic distribution of the SonicOne Ultrasonic Wound Debridement System has expired. In a limited-release test market, Misonix and Medline have been working together to determine the best distribution model for the product. Both companies said the best opportunity for market success would be sales of the product by Misonix through a proprietary distribution network. Medline will continue to close pending SonicOne sales opportunities through March of this year.

• Nonlinear Dynamics (Newcastle Upon Tyne, England), a developer of analysis solutions for proteomics, biomarker discovery and clinical diagnostics, reported it has signed an agreement with UVP (Upland, California) for the promotion and supply of Nonlinear's SameSpots analysis software through UVP's direct sales force and worldwide distributor network.

• Tenet Healthcare (Dallas) said it has signed a new multi-year agreement with Cigna (Bloomfield, Connecticut) including all of Tenet's 54 acute care hospitals, outpatient centers and employed physicians. The agreement includes a provision to include any new facilities that might be added to Tenet's portfolio. With Cigna's planned acquisition of Great-West Healthcare, Tenet has all of its acute care hospitals included in the networks of both managed care companies.

• The U.S. Army has signed a collaborative R&D agreement with Vicor Technologies (Boca Raton, Florida) to investigate technology for assessing the severity of injury and probability of survival of critically injured combat casualties and critically ill civilian patients. Vicor's PD2i Cardiac Analyzer risk-stratifies patients who are at high or low risk of suffering a fatal arrhythmic event or sudden cardiac death within a six-month time frame. The technology also can be adapted to analyze any biological stream of data. The Army and Vicor said they will test the PD2i algorithm in diverse cohorts of animal data as well as in human trauma, ICU patients and combat casualties for development of new decision support tools. The FDA, in pre-investigational device exemption meetings, has agreed to final PD2i protocol and study design for the pivotal VITAL study.