A Medical Device Daily
Cook Endovascular Therapies (Bloomington, Indiana) has entered a partnership with the International Society for Vascular Surgery (ISVS; Smithtown, New York) to form the ISVS — Cook Training Fellowship. These $50,000 grant awards will be used to support fellows in training.
“Vascular surgery is expanding rapidly beyond its traditional areas of practice to include a new generation of interventional procedures such as endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR),” said Barry Thomas, global leader of Cook Medical’s endovascular therapies division. “Cook has a long history of supporting medical education through grants and fellowships, and we hope to help the next generation of vascular surgeons develop the skills they will need to bring the medical advances of the 21st century to patients worldwide.”
Formed in 2003, the ISVS is an international organization committed to the recognition and promotion of vascular surgery as a defined specialty separate and distinct from general and cardiothoracic surgery.
“Through this joint educational venture, Cook and ISVS will further demonstrate both organizations’ long-standing commitment to developing better training opportunities for vascular surgeons and enhancing treatment for vascular patients,” said Thomas.
The ISVS’s mission is to promote vascular surgery as a distinct medical specialty worldwide through the dissemination of administrative, scientific, and clinical knowledge and the creation of strategic alliances; to educate other healthcare professionals, government agencies and the general public.
In other grants/contracts news:
• GW Medical Technologies (Phoenix) said it was recently awarded a $1,036,000 Phase II SBIR Grant from the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland). The grant will assist GW Medical to further develop, refine and commercialize its new LymPro Test, a blood diagnostic test for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
• Logical Images (Rochester, New York) said its clinical decision support software system, VisualDx, is now listed on the U.S. GSA Schedule 70 for Information Technology products and services. The General Services Administration is the central management agency that sets federal policy for federal procurement of real property and information resources management.
The company said the five-year contract will streamline the acquisition and installation process for customers using federal funds to procure VisualDx. Hospitals, clinics, military installations, and research facilities authorized to buy from the GSA Schedule will now be able to use federal allocations to acquire VisualDx.
Installed at more than 350 sites in 20 states, Logical Images said VisualDx is a comprehensive resource for the diagnosis of visually identifiable diseases. By merging medical imaging with clinical information, VisualDx provides a technologically advanced approach to point-of-care decision making and disease recognition, the company said. Health care professionals can enter observations, symptoms, patient medical histories and test results and then compare the patient’s visual or radiological presentation side-by-side with images of possible diagnoses. VisualDx contains more than 13,000 professionally photographed medical images organized in 18 discrete modules including acute pulmonary infections; neonate and infant dermatological conditions; rashes, growths and lesions in adult and pediatric patients; drug eruptions; oral lesions and growths; terrorism recognition; international travel; and female and male genital rashes and growths.
The GSA Schedule Contact Number is GS-35F-0093T with access innovations awarded to two SINs: 132-32 for Term Software Licenses and 132-34 for Software Maintenance.
Logical Images develops products designed to speed visual recognition and clinical decision making.
• Perot Systems (Plano, Texas) has teamed with Medicity (Salt Lake City) to build the first statewide health information exchange for the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN). The six-year contract, with two automatically renewing two-year extensions, was awarded in competitive bidding in October.
The DHIN Clinical Information Exchange Utility is designed to help the state of Delaware monitor public health, allow providers to better manage patient care, and provide consumers with tools to become more engaged in their own healthcare. The DHIN expects the network to support more than 6 million secure, fast, and reliable health information exchanges per year. The first phase of the project involves three hospitals, several physician offices, and a clinical laboratory network, and is expected to be operational within six to nine months.
Perot Systems plans to work with Medicity and the state of Delaware to develop, implement and operate the network to deliver real-time clinical information sharing among all healthcare providers, hospitals, labs and pharmacies across the state. Medicity will provide its Regional Health Information Organization software platform with its flexible health information exchange architecture. Perot Systems will provide data center services from its Plano Technology Center, technical and provider help desks, and outreach training; as well as on-site customer service.
Perot Systems provides technology services and business solutions.