A Medical Device Daily

Fonar (Melville, New York) reported that it has been awarded a contract from the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia (DSCP), part of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), to supply the Fonar Upright MRI scanner and related line of MR products.

DSCP is the contracting agency of DoD for the purchase of all medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, food and related subsistence products, and all clothing and textiles.

DoD's contract is for purchases of the Fonar Upright MRI by all U.S. military hospitals, clinics and other federal agencies around the world, including the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The DLA supplies the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, VA hospitals and other federal agencies and clinics.

“These armed forces divisions supplied by DLA now have direct access to the Fonar Upright MRI for the diagnosis of injuries sustained by military personnel where they can now be evaluated in their fully weight-loaded erect posture,” said Raymond Damadian, president and founder of Fonar.

The contract is the standard length of one year and may be extended for a one-year term each year thereafter. The DoD agency has estimated its expected annual purchases of Fonar's Upright MRI, but the company may pursue unlimited sales of its equipment beyond the initial estimated amount.

In other grants/contracts news, Positron (Houston), a manufacturer of positron emission tomography (PET) medical devices, said that it has agreed to fund Niagara University's Academic Center for Integrated Sciences (Niagara Falls, New York).

The funding is to be used exclusively to support Niagara University's undergraduate biology and chemistry students for research work on a collaborative medico-informatics project with the Academic Center.

The research initiative will be conducted at the Heart Center of Niagara and evaluate the prognostic and diagnostic utility of PET to guide and monitor coronary disease reversal and prevention therapy. Patients who have had more than one PET study and have had their pre-test disease risk assessed by Cadenza software are included in the retrospective analysis. The resulting data will be submitted for publication in select peer reviewed medical journals.

Joseph Oliverio, president of Positron, said, “There is an emerging trend in medicine where patients are able to choose medical management vs. surgical treatment of coronary disease. The research being performed in Niagara will not only attempt to demonstrate the ability to reverse disease non-surgically but more importantly introduce cardiac PET as the preferred imaging modality by cardiologists to guide therapy setting the stage for a new imaging center model.”

Positron manufactures advanced medical imaging devices utilizing PET technology under the trade name Posicam systems.