A Medical Device Daily

VeriChip (Delray Beach, Florida), a subsidiary of Applied Digital , reported that with the help of its partner, Prosec Protection Systems (Lakewood, New Jersey), Stanford Hospital and Clinics (Stanford, California) has selected VeriChip's Assetrac System for the location and tracking of patient transport equipment within its 613-bed facility.

Combining active radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, infrastructure, and software, Assetrac is focused on RFID-based asset control for healthcare facilities with more than 15,000 Asset Tags in use today within U.S. healthcare.

“Often with our wheelchairs, beds, gurneys, and other patient transport equipment, we can't find them when we need them or they're not being utilized as efficiently as they could be,“ said Paul Watkins, administrative director, support services, Stanford Hospital and Clinics. “By installing Assetrac and tagging these items, Facility Services will now gain better visibility and control of these assets improving our overall efficiencies and patient care.“

Scheduled for installation in April by Prosec, the first phase of the Assetrac implementation will provide a combination of real-time and zone-based location of approximately 800 pieces of equipment tagged with VeriChip's active RFID Asset Tags anywhere within the hospital. By strategically placing RFID receivers throughout the facility, the system will be able to display equipment location on an electronic floor plan.

Cardinal Health (Dublin, Ohio), a provider of products and services supporting healthcare, has signed an agreement with The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston) for its Alaris System.

The Alaris System with Guardrails Suite MX software is a safety system available for all types of infusions and the only system with the ability to enable pre-configured limits around both total dose and duration of intermittent drug infusions including chemotherapy, according to the company.

Fresenius Medical Care expands in Utah

The Governor's Office of Economic Development (Salt Lake City) reported the expansion of the Fresenius Medical Care production facility in Ogden, Utah. Fresenius Medical Care, which says it is the world's largest provider of dialysis products and services, will create 270 new jobs and make a capital investment of approximately $80 million in this phase of plant expansion.

The expansion of the Ogden plant is expected to be completed during the first half of 2007. The capital expenditure for this expansion is included in the company's 2006 financial guidance, and is expected to meet the continued demand for the single-use dialyzer product line.

This expansion will increase the production capacity from 27 million to more than 33 million dialyzers annually.