A Medical Device Daily

Philips Research (Briarcliff Manor, New York) said that it will lead phase one of a four-year Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project to reduce the number of battlefield deaths from internal bleeding. A consortium that it will head, it said, will develop a new technology to automatically detect and stem the internal bleeding of wounded soldiers.

It said the system will take the form of an ultrasound-based cuff device. Its application could also be extended to prevent blood-loss related civilian deaths caused by accidents and serious injury.

“Ninety percent of all combat deaths occur before a casualty reaches a facility with definitive medical care,” said Dr. Helen Routh, principal investigator and general manager of Philips Research. “We propose a cuff that will detect life-threatening internal bleeding and stop blood flow – hemostasis – with minimal damage to the surrounding tissue.”

The project – “Autonomous Acoustic Hemostasis” – will concentrate on the development of a high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) technique for stemming internal bleeding by encouraging coagulation, and simple enough to be used by someone with no medical training. Composed of robust lightweight cuffs applied to the arms and legs, the device will automatically detect internal bleeding and use an ultrasound pulse to coagulate the blood at the site of the trauma. This stems further blood-loss and allows the casualty to be moved to a field hospital or emergency room.

The system may also reduce the number of limbs lost and help identify those at risk of progressive shock. Philips said it promises benefits to the public by complementing the emergency medicine activities of Philips Medical Systems (Bothell, Washington/Andover, Massachusetts), by being usable by untrained personnel, as is the case for the company's portable HeartStart defibrillator, it said.

Philips Research is collaborating with researchers at the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington (Seattle); Philips Applied Technologies (Houston, Pennsylvania/San Jose, California); and Philips Medical Systems.

“We've assembled an outstanding multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Washington in acoustic hemostasis and Philips in North America in ultrasound arrays and systems,” said Dr. Lawrence Crum, principal investigator for UW and director of the Center for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound at the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory. Crum is also research professor of bioengineering and electrical Engineering at UW.

In other agreement news:

• Radlink (Redondo Beach, California), a provider of medical imaging systems to healthcare providers, reported that it has signed an agreement with JD Imaging (Mundelein, Illinois) to serve as master distributors of its breakthrough CR Pro machine to healthcare organizations in five Midwestern states.

JD Imaging, a provider of medical imaging systems, will be responsible for sales of Radlink's CR Pro machine in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Missouri.

Radlink's system utilizes a sealed fiber-optic laser technology (patent pending) to deliver diagnostic-quality images that provide long-term image quality.

“This agreement with JD Imaging Corp. gives us an important footprint in the Midwestern medical imaging market, and we're confident that their established local reputation will be instrumental in helping us to accelerate sales of CR Pro throughout the important five states in the region in which they'll be distributing the product,” said Thomas Hacking, CEO of Radlink.

• Silver Cross Hospital (Joliet, Illinois) reported plans to upgrade its emergency department (ED) to Medhost 's (Addison, Texas) full-suite Emergency Department Information System (EDIS).

Medhost's partnership with Iatric Systems (Boxford, Massachusetts) will allow Silver Cross to fully integrate its Meditech Hospital Information System (HIS) with Medhost's EDIS.

Silver Cross will utilize Medhost with the expectation to increase patient safety, reduce individual wait times and improve charge capture in the hospital's new ED, which opens this month, the company said.