A Medical Device Daily

Advocos (Kennesaw, Georgia), a contract sales organization that provides sales and marketing services to the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries, reported that it has entered into a multi-year agreement with MD Scientific (Charlotte, North Carolina) to promote that company's EndoTool glucose management system to hospitals. EndoTool received FDA clearance in June (Medical Device Daily, June 22, 2006).

Advocos will provide multiple sales teams to be launched in August and October, with the potential to expand the sales teams over time.

Robert Godfrey, president of Advocos, said, “Our experience within the hospital sector provides Advocos with the background to quickly launch and impact this market. We are excited about the opportunity to work with MD Scientific in an effort to increase awareness while also expanding the use of EndoTool within hospitals throughout the U.S.”

Shade Mecum, CEO of MD Scientific said, “As our reach expands nationally, we continue to build out the team that can help ensure the impact of EndoTool and safe glucose control in critical care settings.”

SurgiCount Medical , a wholly owned subsidiary of Patient Safety Technologies (both Los Angeles), said it has entered into a three-year agreement to provide its Safety-Sponge system for the prevention of retained sponges after surgery to the entire network of Integris Health System (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), Oklahoma's largest not-for-profit healthcare organization. This new contract will take the Safety-Sponge system from two hospitals currently to the entire network which includes 11 hospitals. Financial terms were not disclosed.

SurgiCount says the Safety-Sponge is the only computer-assisted system FDA-cleared for counting sponges. The system is a program of thermally affixed, data matrix-tagged surgical sponges, line-of-sight scanning technology and documentation offering a solution to gossypiboma, sponges accidentally left inside a human body after surgery.

Based on estimates by Patient Safety Technologies management, gossypiboma occurs in an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 surgical procedures each year in the U.S., and liability settlements and other costs related to retained sponges amount to $500 million to $750 million annually.

Integris owns or leases hospitals, primary care clinics, mental health facilities, rehabilitation centers, fitness centers, hospice services, home health agencies and independent living centers throughout Oklahoma.

SurgiCount's Safety-Sponge system works much like a grocery store check-out system. Every surgical sponge and towel is pre-labeled by the manufacturer with an individual and unique bar coded label, and a scanning counter is used to read and record the labels.

No change is required in a hospital's established counting procedures; sponges are counted and recorded by the system at the beginning of the procedure and again as they are removed from the patient.