Agreements

• Aesculap (St. Louis) reported being awarded supplier agreements with Amerinet (St. Louis), a national group purchasing organization. The two agreements, effective Feb. 1, 2008, through Jan. 31, 2011, provide Amerinet’s acute care members access to Aesculap’s sutures and Histoacryl tissue adhesive products. Aesculap and Amerinet already had a supplier contract for sutures, and the new agreement gives Amerinet members access to Histoacryl tissue adhesive, one of the company’s latest wound closure products, approved by FDA in 2007. Histoacryl is manufactured by B. Braun (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) and has been marketing outside the U.S. for more than 30 years. In the U.S., Histoacryl is distributed by the Aesculap subsidiary of B. Braun in partnership with TissueSeal (Ann Arbor, Michigan).

• DexCom (San Diego) reported a development agreement with Animas (West Chester, Pennsylvania) to integrate DexCom’s continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology into Animas insulin pumps. The new product will be based on Animas’ advanced pump technology and DexCom’s Seven, a seven-day continuous glucose monitoring system, enabling the Animas pump to receive glucose readings and display this information on the pump’s color screen. Animas will contribute up to $750,000 to DexCom to offset certain development, clinical and regulatory costs. DexCom said that it anticipates the integrated system to be available to patients in 2009 or early 2010.

DexCom also signed an agreement with Jan Insulet (Bedford, Massachusetts) to integrate DexCom’s continuous glucose monitoring technology into the wireless, hand-held OmniPod System Personal Diabetes Manager (PDM). In addition to programming the patient’s insulin delivery, the PDM with integrated DexCom technology will receive and display continuous glucose readings from DexCom’s wearable sensor transmitter.

• Home Diagnostics (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) reported an agreement to be the exclusive supplier of a co-branded blood glucose monitoring system for Rite Aid (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) drug stores. Home Diagnostics’ TRUEtrack will be available as the TRUEtrack for Rite Aid blood glucose monitoring system at 5,000 Rite Aid stores across the U.S. starting in March. TRUEtrack uses biosensor and chip coding technology to generate results in 10 seconds from a single microliter of blood.

• iCAD (Nashua, New Hampshire), a provider of computer-aided detection (CAD) solutions for the early identification of cancer, reported an agreement with ACR Image Metrix (Philadelphia) to conduct a multi-reader clinical study of iCAD’s CT Colon product, for use with virtual colonoscopy. iCAD will work with ACR Image Metrix to develop and execute a clinical study to support FDA approval of CT Colon CAD.

• Ivivi Technologies (Northvale, New Jersey), a developer of non-invasive, electrotherapeutic technologies, said it has signed a new three-year contract with Regency Hospital Company (Alpharetta, Georgia), an owner/operator of long-term, acute-care hospitals across the U.S. The contract will facilitate Regency’s expanded use of Ivivi’s Roma3 pulsed electromagnetic field device for the treatment of chronic wounds. Ivivi will provide Regency facilities with several packages that are priced using a fixed monthly rental rate per facility vs. the previous agreement’s per-unit rental rate.

• Masimo (Irvine, California) reported a three-year supplier agreement with HealthTrust Purchasing Group (Brentwood, Tennessee) that provides HealthTrust members access to Masimo SET pulse oximetry and Masimo Rainbow SET monitoring technologies. Masimo said that the addition of HealthTrust expands its GPO contracts to include all 10 of the nation’s top GPOs, allowing hospitals and other care providers access to Masimo SET and Masimo Rainbow SET technologies.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported new agreements for surgical instrument tray reprocessing services/sterilization, a new contracting category, have been awarded to Aesculap (Center Valley, Pennsylvania); American Endoscopy Services (Brentwood, Tennessee), and SRI/Surgical Express (Tampa, Florida). The service provides customized surgical instrument sets on a per-procedure fee basis. The 36-month agreements, which took effect Jan. 1, are available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier alliance.

• Rubicon Genomics (Ann Arbor, Michigan) reported a collaboration with OncoMethylome Sciences (Durham, North Carolina/Liege, Belgium) to identify biomarkers for early detection of cancer. Rubicon said it will use its MethylPlex platform to carry out the analysis. Additionally, Rubicon granted OncoMethylome an option to licensing markers resulting from the collaboration. Rubicon is a developer of proprietary MethylPlex-based tests for non-invasive diagnosis of cancer and other diseases, as well as kits and services to facilitate gene-based research and drug development.