A Medical Device Daily

BearingPoint (McLean, Virginia), a management and technology consulting firm, reported that it has been awarded an information technology contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, Maryland) potentially valued at $35.9 million over five years if all options are exercised.

The first year of the contract is valued at $6.9 million. BearingPoint will support NIH's Information Enterprise Systems through the development and maintenance of its Data Warehouse and nVision projects, which is expected to allow NIH to produce necessary business intelligence reports for its accounting and administrative business systems.

BearingPoint has partnered with NIH in the design, development and deployment of multiple business intelligence solutions to meet the agency's reporting needs for key areas of the business, including budget and finance; human resources; acquisition management; technology transfer; property management; travel management; staff training and development.

In other grants/contracts news:

• Alere Medical (Reno, Nevada) has expanded agreements for heart failure disease management programs with two health plans. The multi-year agreements are expected to allow Alere to enroll more patients in and coordinate care for Health Net's Medicare Advantage health plan members in Arizona and Blue Shield's Medicare Advantage members in California.

Alere recently launched expanded Medicare programs for Blue Shield California and Health Net to meet the new Medicare Modernization Act requirements. The expanded programs offer Alere's DayLink monitor and telephonic monitoring, along with enhanced co-morbidity screening and advanced directive/end-of-life discussions. The expanded programs also include a medication management component, which feeds medication data into the Alere system designed for more comprehensive medication management, the company said.

• iCAD (Nashua, New Hampshire), provider of computer-aided detection (CAD) solutions for detection in “subtle“ forms of breast cancer, and HealthTrust Purchasing Group (Brentwood, Tennessee), entered an agreement that gives HealthTrust members access to SecondLook CAD systems for use with mammography.

The two-year agreement includes all of iCAD's SecondLook film-based mammographic CAD solutions and the TotalLook system, which converts prior film mammograms at full image fidelity for use in comparative reading with digital mammography. Preferred pricing will be available to HealthTrust's 1,200 hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and alternate care sites nationwide.