• Allarae Healthcare, (Irving, Califorina) reported signing a distribution agreement with Intellect, to sell their entire product line on a non-exclusive basis, worldwide. Intellect has developed a broad range of personal health testing kits, several already FDA-approved, and personal tracking software for home use. The test kits are ready for market but have not yet been commercialized. The company added that tests for strep, influenza, cholesterol, and glucose levels are the first to be packaged for immediate sale. Tests for certain other conditions including certain forms of cancer and hepatitis are near completion and will be ready for the market in 2008.

• Beckman Coulter (Fullerton California) reported that it will be the industrial partner in a two-year research project to be carried out at Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia) and Laboraf Diagnostica e Ricerca San Raffaele SpA (Milan, Italy). The collaborative research will seek to discover genetic signatures for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and obesity-related hypertension. Beckman Coulter will have exclusive license to commercial application of the results, which will be used to develop content for the company's molecular diagnostics platform. Products and platforms used in the research studies include Biomek FXP Laboratory Automation Workstations and GenomeLab SNPStream Genotyping Systems.

• Digital Angel (St. Paul, Minnesota), a company developing rapid identification, location tracking and condition monitoring of high-value assets, and VeriChip (Delray Beach, Florida), a provider of RFID systems for healthcare, reported its manufacturing partner, Raytheon Microelectronics Espana will participate in the production development of a self-contained implantable RFID glucose-sensing microchip being developed by Digital Angel and its project partners VeriChip and Receptors (Chaska, Minnesota).

• Embla Systems (Denver) a company developing sleep diagnostic software and equipment reported an exclusive agreement with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC; Boston) for the distribution of the Cardio Pulmonary Coupling (CPC) technology which presents a picture of sleep oscillations and interactions instead of manual sleep stage scoring and counting of respiratory events that has been the long-time standard. The CPC technology will give physicians the "Sleep Health" of a patient and to evaluate if the patient has Obstructive, Central or Complex Sleep Apnea. Over the next 12 to 18 months Embla will be developing the technology into their existing laboratory based Polysomnography (PSG) equipment and their portable home monitoring equipment.

• HemCon Medical Technologies (Portland, Oregon) reported it has received exclusive rights to market and distribute the Simplified Automated Ventilator (SAVe) by AutoMedx (Germantown, Maryland) in the U.S. The device will be used by military personnel to supply resuscitation care to injured soldiers on the battlefield.

• Nationwide Respiratory (Waterloo, Indiana) and Masimo (Irvine, California) reported that they have entered into a preferred provider agreement making Masimo SET pulse oximetry technology available to Nationwide's network of more than 150 respiratory homecare providers. Nationwide Respiratory, part of the VGM Group — the nation's largest member service organization for home medical equipment — is a national network of more than 150 independent respiratory homecare providers in the U.S. with more than 400 locations.

• Rosetta Genomics (Rehovot, Israel) and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC; New York) reported that they will collaborate to develop microRNA-based diagnostic tests for diffuse large cell lymphoma, transformed follicular lymphoma and for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, three types of non-hodgkin lymphoma (NHLs). Combining Rosetta technologies with CUMC's expertise in cancer, researchers will screen for microRNAs (miRNAs) that may be used as potential biomarkers and drug targets for these NHL indications. Rosetta develops miRNA-based diagnostics and therapeutics.

• TomoTherapy (Madison, Wisconsin) reported that it has signed contracts with distributors in Israel, Greece, Poland, Turkey, Russia and the United Arab Emirates to sell the TomoTherapy. TomoTherapy has developed the Hi-Art system for the treatment of a wide variety of cancers.

• TrialStat (Ottawa) reported that Notal Vision (Tel Aviv, Israel), a medical device company specializing in the early detection of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), has selected its ClinicalAnalytics (CA) system for a Phase II device trial in Israel and the U.S. Notal Vision said it selected TrialStat for its on-demand flexibility, the ability to attach images to eCRFs and import data from Notal Vision's medical devices. A key part of the trial requires independent ophthalmologists to review Foresee PHP's ability to evaluate the progression of wet AMD in study participants. CA 4.0 allows the study's researchers to attach images of participant eyes to an eCRF to enable ophthalmologists to view them and enter data for analysis in one step.