A Medical Device Daily

OTN (South San Francisco, California), a physician services company and a distributor of products and services to the community physician market, said that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with Altos Solutions (Los Altos, California) that will add electronic medical record (EMR) functionality to OTN’s current integrated Lynx technology platform. Lynx EMR is a new application that provides broad oncology-specific EMR capabilities and integrates directly with Lynx’ existing automated charge capture, inventory management and practice management tools. Lynx EMR was developed specifically for medical oncologists.

“Our comprehensive, integrated Lynx technology platform provides customers with the right technology at the right time, helping them succeed with quality care initiatives and increasing profitability. With the addition of the user-friendly Lynx EMR, we can now offer our customers another capability that will help them increase practice efficiency and allow more time for patient care,” said Mike Kelly, chief information officer for OTN. “We chose Altos as our EMR partner because of its long-standing understanding of the technology needs of community oncologists and of software as a service, which solves the frustrations associated with purchasing software licenses, paying services contracts and buying upgrades.”

OTN’s Lynx technology platform has a modular approach that automates the processes that are most important to an oncology practice, such as charge capture, inventory management, reporting, scheduling and billing. This helps physicians who practice in the community-based treatment setting manage clinical and business processes as efficiently as possible.

Lynx EMR, a new application in the Lynx technology platform, is an oncology-specific clinical management system that makes key patient medical data available securely 24/7 via the web. Lynx EMR automatically generates treatment flowsheets, calculates dosages, streamlines treatment documentation and automates the creation of daily orders.

In other agreements:

• Hydromer (Branchburg, New Jersey) said that it has entered into a 4.5 year coating services agreement with an unnamed U.S.-based medical device company serving the needs of interventional cardiologists and radiologists throughout the world.

Hydromer has agreed to apply its Hydromer hydrophilic coatings on various blood clot extraction and vascular access catheters under strict FDA cGMP and ISO 13485-2003 conditions.

These catheters will be coated using the internally-designed and built catheter coating machines.

* DuPont (Wilmington, Delaware) said it has signed an agreement with GC (Tokyo), a manufacturer of dental materials and equipment, to provide dental monomer technology that reduces the shrinkage of dental composites.

“GC Corporation offers outstanding performance in dental composites that have superior function, quality and aesthetics,” Shoji Akahane, GC director of research and development, said. “We believe that the combination of the DuPont monomer technology with our company’s dental composite expertise has resulted in the development of a superior and innovative dental composite resin for the global market.”

The DuPont technology is uniquely tunable, offering the ability to optimize dental composites to offer enhanced properties including higher flex strength and fracture toughness, and better handling while enabling reduced shrinkage. DuPont will license the technology and branding of the product.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported a new group buy opportunity for non-invasive cardiology equipment with GE Medical Technologies Information Systems (Wauwatosa, Wisconsin).

This savings opportunity, available during the ordering period of August 13 through November 2, 2007, offers additional savings to acute care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.

Premier’s Group Buy program offers members coordinated, limited-time, volume-driven purchasing opportunities that feature savings beyond regular contract pricing. It also may include special rates for related services. Savings vary, but are often 5%-15% lower than standard contract discounts.