A Medical Device Daily

Kodak Company's Dental Systems group (Rochester, New York) and Criticare Systems (Milwaukee) have developed a software package designed to enable oral surgeons to automatically record and store patients' vital signs during surgery.

The companies integrated Criticare patient monitoring solutions with Kodak Winoms CS Practice Management Software, permitting the software to automatically record vital signs such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and respiration in an electronic anesthesia record.

Typically, oral surgeons use manual methods to record, and later transcribe patients' vital signs during surgery. Since the Kodak software now automates the process, surgeons are expected to be able to place greater focus on patients, in addition to saving time. The software also eliminates the extra step of having to place the transcribed data into a patient's file after surgery.

The Kodak Winoms CS Software, combined with Kodak's current offerings for the diagnostic and post-operative phases of patient treatment, is designed to enables a complete patient-information flow through an entire procedure, the company said.

“We view it as a value-add to our product line and an important step to help our customers move to electronic medical records,” said Richard Hirschland, general manager of Kodak's Dental Systems group.

The software necessary for communication between CSI monitors and Kodak's practice management software was collaboratively developed by the two companies over the past six months.

Criticare is focused on the placement of monitoring systems within the domestic oral and maxillofacial surgical market.

In other agreements news:

• Vical ( San Diego) reported granting non-exclusive, academic licenses for its broad DNA delivery technology patent estate to six additional leading research institutions — Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle), Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, University of Iowa, University of Notre Dame, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Washington. Earlier this year, the company announced the grant of academic licenses on the same terms to Stanford University, Harvard University, Yale University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The non-exclusive licenses allow university re-searchers to use Vical's technology for educational and internal, non-commercial research purposes. In exchange, Vical will have the option to exclusively license from the universities potential commercial applications stemming from the technology on terms to be negotiated.

Vical's technology is designed to allow delivery of genetic material into living cells in the body without the use of viruses.

• Advanced Clinical Research Services (ACRS; Bannockburn, Illinois) and WebbWrites (Durham, North Carolina) reported the formation of a strategic alliance to offer electronic data capture (EDC), clinical data management, biostatistics, and medical writing services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies performing clinical trials to meet regulatory submission requirements for the FDA and other global agencies.

The two organizations have offered complementary services to a diverse and growing client base for nearly 600 clinical trials encompassing a broad range of therapeutic areas and all phases of clinical development, the companies said.

ACRS has provided clinical data management services since 1995. WebbWrites has provided biostatistics and medical writing services since 1998.