A Medical Device Daily

Blu-Med Response System (Kirkland, Washington) reported three new contract awards, together worth more than $1.4 million, that will increase medical preparedness and surge capacity for hospitals and public health systems in Delaware, Ohio and Houston.

The first contract, for a Rapidly Deployable Medical Response System, was awarded by the Public Health Preparedness Division of Delaware’s Department of Health and Social Services. The contract includes customized Blu-Med mobile medical shelters with hard flooring kits, HVAC and electrical systems, generators and ancillary support units including portable showers, toilets and oxygen delivery systems. In addition to the portable medical shelters and equipment, Blu-Med will provide training and technical support services for the Public Health Preparedness Section in Dover, Delaware in late January.

The Blu-Med shelter systems will be used to boost medical surge capacity in the event of pandemic influenza, bioterrorism, or other mass-casualty incident.

The second contract, for one 25-bed shelter package stored in a custom cargo trailer to provide extreme mobility, was purchased by the Perry County (Ohio) Health Department on behalf of the Ohio Hospital Association. This Blu-Med shelter solution will provide rapid response capability and surge capacity to hospitals in Perry County.

The third contract, awarded by the City of Houston, is for a fleet of trailer-based medical shelter systems. Houston’s Fire Department will have access to three Blu-Med RapidSurge Systems full-scale emergency medical shelters that have been upgraded with negative pressure isolation capacity, and are stored and transported in custom cargo trailers.

“These systems will offer great flexibility in meeting Houston’s public health needs in a disaster or emergency,” said president of Blu-Med Response Systems Gerrit Boyle. “They can be utilized to provide space for hospital surge capacity, medical isolation and large-scale immunizations, as well as extra capacity for triage and evaluation at the scene of an incident.”

The new contracts will add Texas, Ohio and Delaware to a growing list of states, counties and municipalities that are building their preparedness for large-scale public health emergencies, the company said.

“We are pleased to assist these government agencies in their strategies to build a tangible system of deployable assets for medical preparedness,” Boyle said.

Blu-Med Response Systems provides turnkey, portable shelter-based solutions for disaster medical surge facilities, alternate command centers, temporary housing and base camp requirements. A full range of medical equipment packages is available. Support services include vendor managed inventory options, field deployment, and training & exercise services.

Blu-Med facilities can be sized and customized to meet a variety of state and local emergency management and public health needs, with modular options including medical surge wards, patient treatment, decontamination, immunization/drug distribution, negative pressure isolation, and field laboratory units. Blu-Med Response Systems is a division of Alaska Structures.

In other news:

• Kaidara Software (Los Altos, California) reported that Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, California) has selected the Kaidara Advisor knowledge management system to develop a central knowledgebase for its technical support operations. The initial Kaidara deployment is at Beckman’s Immunoassay division with options in the agreement to include future deployments in other Beckman Coulter divisions.

Kaidara develops software solutions designed to streamline resolution of complex questions and problems and reduce costs associated with delivering customer service.

Beckman Coulter makes biomedical testing instrument systems, tests and supplies designed to simplify and automate laboratory processes.

• Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego, California) reported that new agreements for regional anesthesia trays — used to provide supplies for spinal and epidural pain management and anesthesia – have been awarded to Smiths Medical ASD (Keene, New Hampshire) and B. Braun Medical (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania).

The company also reported that new agreements for instrument containers have been awarded to Aesculap (Center Valley, Pennsylvania); Cardinal Health Medical Products and Services (McGaw Park, Illinois); Case Medical (Ridgefield, New Jersey); and Medline Industries (Mundelein, Illinois).

The 36-month agreements, effective Feb. 1, are available to acute care and continuum of care markets.

Serving 1,700 hospitals and more than 43,000 other healthcare sites, Premier bills itself the largest healthcare alliance in the U. S. “dedicated to improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care. Premiere is owned by not-for-profit hospitals.”