A Medical Device Daily

MedQuist (Mount Laurel, New Jersey), a provider of medical transcription outsourcing and clinical documentation workflow solutions, and IQMax (Charlotte, North Carolina), a provider of mobile healthcare solutions, reported strengthening of their partnership to deliver point-of-care clinical documentation and dictation solutions to healthcare.

As part of their strengthened partnership, IQMax said it is more tightly integrating its mobile solutions with MedQuist's technology and services solutions.

MedQuist's PhysAssist IQ, powered by IQMax, allows caregivers to manage their daily workflow by delivering patient list and demographic information to physicians on their mobile devices, so that they can dictate and document patient encounters at the point of care or in between appointments, at the time and place most convenient for them.

With PhysAssist IQ, physicians can synchronize their dictated patient encounters securely in a wireless or wired environment across any care setting, whether acute or ambulatory. PhysAssist IQ is certified on more than 40 different mobile devices utilizing the Microsoft Windows Mobile or Palm Operating Systems, so customers have a variety to choose from.

Now, PhysAssist IQ mobile solutions will be integrated into MedQuist's new dictation platform, DocQment Ovation, to provide healthcare customers with a total end-to-end documentation solution.

Ovation is a web-based enterprise digital voice capture and document management solution that provides centralized administration and management from a single point.

"Integrating PhysAssist IQ with the DocQment Ovation platform allows healthcare customers to purchase a best-in-class, comprehensive documentation solution that will streamline the entire process of dictation and documentation within a healthcare facility, support the electronic medical record and significantly improve the productivity of physicians practicing in any setting.

In other agreement news: Gentex (Carbondale, Pennsylvania) and Natvar (Clayton, North Carolina) have agreed to jointly develop materials for producing extruded medical tubing. Natvar will be granted a license to Gentex's patented Clearweld laser welding technology to compound, produce and market near-infrared-absorbing resin additives for medical tubing applications.

The Clearweld process employs specialty infrared absorbing additives that are compounded directly into plastic resins to laser weld medical tubing and connectors. These laser-absorbing materials focus laser energy and convert it into heat. Localized heating at the interface of the Luer and tube produces strong, hermetically sealed welds with minimal thermal and mechanical stress and no particulates making it ideal for medical applications, the companies said. This new technology will eliminate the need for solvents or adhesives currently used in assembly operations for many medical devices.

Gentex is a private corporation with four operating units: Helmet Systems, Performance Materials, Respiratory Products and Electro-acoustic Products.

Natvar develops tubing extrusion technology for the medical and industrial markets. It specializes in providing close-tolerance tubing components for such applications as intravenous therapy, hemodialysis equipment, cardiovascular procedures, urinary drainage, and catheterization.