A Medical Device Daily

Acacia Research Corporation (Newport Beach, California) reported that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded a one-year, $2.2 million contract to one of its operating groups, CombiMatrix (Mukilteo, Washington), for further development of its microarray technologies for a multipathogen- and chemical-detection system.

Under previously funded programs with the DoD, CombiMatrix said it has demonstrated that its products can simultaneously detect toxins, viruses, and bacteria using its semiconductor-based microarrays. Unique to this platform is its “on chip” electrochemical detection process, which eliminates the need for complex, expensive, and less-portable optical instrumentation.

“The events in the UK, in June, underscore the need for better technologies and products to address the constant threat of terrorist activities. Although the terrorist activity utilized explosives, the threat of chemical or biological weapons persists,” said Dr. David Danley, director of Homeland Security and Defense Programs at CombiMatrix. “Our products are being designed to address biothreat agents as well as infectious diseases of public health concern, including influenza A and the ‘Bird flu’ subtype along with other upper-respiratory infections.”

Amit Kumar, MD, president/CEO of CombiMatrix, said, “CombiMatrix’s work with the DoD to address infectious diseases fits nicely with our strategy of developing products for the molecular-diagnostics and the personalized-medicine market segments. We have already launched several microarray-based diagnostics products addressing diseases like childhood abnormalities and hematological cancers.”

The CombiMatrix group is developing a platform technology to rapidly produce customizable arrays, which are semiconductor-based tools for use in identifying and determining the roles of genes, gene mutations and proteins.

CombiMatrix develops technology with applications in the areas of genomics, proteomics, biosensors, drug discovery, drug development, diagnostics, combinatorial chemistry, material sciences and nanotechnology.

In other contract news: The Rhode Island Department of Health (Providence) has awarded technology services company EDS (Plano, Texas), the state’s longtime Medicaid fiscal agent, a three-year contract to design, implement and manage the nation’s first statewide network for electronic health records.

The contract, valued at $1.7 million, includes four 12-month options and will be managed from EDS’ Electronic Health Record Center of Excellence in nearby Warwick. The network is expected to go live in the summer of 2008.

After securing a patient’s permission, the Rhode Island Health Information Exchange (HIE; Providence) will consolidate the health information of state residents in a secure network to provide authorized hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare providers with a more complete patient health file to aid in patient care.

“With the creation of a statewide Health Information Exchange, doctors will be able to look up their patient’s critical health information, giving them a more complete understanding of their patients and allowing them to provide higher quality, safer, more coordinated care,” said Rhode Island Director of Health David Gifford.

EDS will use healthcare software from InterSystems (Cambridge, Massachusetts) to build and integrate the system.