A Medical Device Daily

Medusa Medical Technologies (Halifax, Nova Scotia) said that its flagship electronic patient care reporting software, the Siren ePCR Suite, is being implemented in a pilot program for ground ambulances operated by Emergency Health Services Nova Scotia (EHS).

Upon completion of the pilot program, the Siren ePCR Suite will be in all 150 of EHS' ground ambulances, as well as in both LifeFlight air ambulances operated by the service, and more than 800 paramedics will have been trained by EHS to use the system.

The Siren ePCR Suite is an electronic patient care reporting system that Medusa said "improves the speed and accuracy with which paramedics can record patient information while in an ambulance en route to hospital. Ultimately, Siren allows paramedics to spend less time documenting patients' ailments, and more time treating them."

Chris d'Entremont, minister of health for the province, said, "Good patient care requires good information. This new system will help paramedics track a patient's condition and treatment decisions quicker and more accurately, allowing paramedics to focus more time on patient care."

Medusa said its contract with EHS "positions Nova Scotia as Canada's first province to offer all of its residents the benefits of a complete electronic patient care solution in a pre-hospital/out of hospital emergency services environment."

It said the initiative also will create advances in pre-hospital emergency medicine for EHS. The Siren ePCR Suite includes data analysis tools that will allow EHS to generate reports to measure the performance of the system.

President and CEO Scott Campbell said, "Digital patient care records provide a more comprehensive view of pre-hospital care than paper documentation ever could. Reports that used to take months to compile can now be generated in minutes. This will assist in developing enhanced procedures and practices for the entire province."

Distribution pact for Rapid BSE Assay in China

Genesis Bioventures (Los Angeles) reported that BioBDC , the company's exclusive agent for sales and distribution of Prion Developmental Laboratories ' (PDL; Buffalo Grove, Illinois) Rapid BSE assay for "mad cow" disease testing for the Pacific Rim, has received a letter of intent from Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Co. (Beijing, China) to sell and distribute the Rapid BSE test kits throughout that country.

Genesis, which holds the exclusive worldwide sales, marketing and distribution license for PDL's rapid assays, said the BSE assay is "an inexpensive, fast, and easy-to-perform alternative to current laboratory methods."

BioBDC is a diagnostic marketing company holding an exclusive sales and distribution contract for the lateral flow test — which will become the benchmark platform for testing for Prion related animal diseases — in the Pacific Rim.

"We are excited about the progress we have made with our international team in establishing market acceptance in our distribution area," said Stuart Brame, president of BioBDC. "The uniqueness and user ease of the BSE assay has established a new on-site, inexpensive benchmark for related testing and we anticipate quick market penetration as we move to product sales."

Genesis said it intends to establish international distribution by exclusive licenses with key partners in six major territories: Pacific Rim, U.S., Canada, Europe, South America and Rest of World.

UK hospital trust orders two more Elekta systems

Elekta (Stockholm, Sweden) reported receiving an order to supply two Elekta Synergy systems to the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in the UK.

The order includes one HexaPOD 6-D robotic patient-positioning system and a full Mosaiq electronical medical records and networking software suite.

Elekta said the Synergy is "the most advanced and clinically proven cancer treatment system with intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and advanced 3-D image guided radiation therapy (IGRT), allowing clinicians to both image and treat patients in the same frame of reference, at the time of treatment."

It said the system addresses the three most persistent and significant problems in modern radiation therapy: external patient movement, internal organ motion and errors in overall patient set-up.

Elekta said the Royal Marsden Hospital was the first hospital in the world dedicated to cancer treatment and research into the causes of cancer. The hospital and its academic partner, the Institute of Cancer Research, form the largest comprehensive cancer center in Europe, with more than 40,000 patients from the UK and abroad seen each year. The trust operates five IGRT systems from Elekta.

Signalife gets okay for Mexican sales

Signalife (Greenville, South Carolina) said it has received a Certificate to Foreign Government, which allows the importation of the Signalife Fidelity 100 ECG Monitor System into Mexico. The certification states that the Fidelity 100 may be marketed in, and legally exported from the U.S. to Mexico.

"This is an important milestone for the company, as there has been interest in markets outside the U.S. for a product that offers both clinical advantages for the healthcare community, but also has applications in the wellness industry," said Bill Matthews, Signalife's director of regulatory affairs. "Now we are poised to sell units in this market that has waited patiently for this approval."

Signalife develops signal-monitoring devices for detecting diseases. It primarily offers patient modules that are used as part of a heart monitor system to acquire, amplify, and process physiological signals associated with a patient's cardiovascular system.

Cinpathogen in joint research venture

Bioresearch firm Cinpathogen (Boulder, Colorado) said it has partnered with the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Fudan University (Shanghai, China) to form the Fudan Cinpathogen Center for Clinical and Molecular Research.

Saying the partnership "provides an unprecedented opportunity," Dr. Richard Irons, Cinpathogen CEO, added: "By integrating Western and Chinese medical research systems, we can advance global biomedical research and help satisfy China's growing demand for high-quality healthcare."

Cinpathogen said the collaboration "brings together clinical operations, modern diagnostic laboratories and access to one of the largest tissue banks dedicated to diseases of the blood and immune systems in order to support diagnosis and conduct protocol-driven research on the etiology, pathogenesis and treatment of disease."