A Medical Device Daily

As is the nature with information technology in healthcare – and its intersecting layers of technologies – a company may feature its products in its own booth as well as that of one partner, and another, and another.

That is the situation being bannered by Valence Technology (Austin, Texas), which could report its large-format, lithium-ion battery technology appearing in no fewer than eight booths of partners at the 2006 annual conference and exhibition of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS; Chicago) this week in San Diego, ending today.

Valence says that its Saphion technology is the industry's first commercially available, safe, large-format, lithium-ion, rechargeable battery technology. Dean Bogues, vice president of sales, marketing and product development for Valence, said, “By using our Saphion lithium-ion battery technology, the state-of-the-art medical devices offered by our partners at the HIMSS conference can run better, more reliably, longer and safer.“

The batteries are incorporated into Valence's U-Charge and/or N-Charge Power Systems and are being featured by: Carstens, charting systems; EnovateIT, mobile wireless solutions for point-of-care applications; Howard Medical, computer hardware and point-of-care solutions; Humanscale, ergonomic specialist; Ergotron, video-display solutions at the point-of-care; InfoLogix, mobile wireless solutions; Rubbermaid Medical Solutions, products supporting in-hospital patient care; and Sayers Healthcare, IT equipment solutions for healthcare.

The N-Charge portable energy solution provides continuous power for complete mobile patient care and data collection and appropriate for notebook and tablet PC brands and models. The rechargeable battery system offers up to 10 hours of continuous run-time and is mountable on a medical cart for continuous power and mobility.

U-Charge Power Systems offer twice the run-time, deliver greater energy density and are more reliable than lead-acid batteries, according to Valence. It says its recently announced U-Charge System RT models are ideal for healthcare applications such as electric wheelchairs and mobile workstations.

In other offerings at the HIMSS meeting:

• Cardinal Health (Dublin, Ohio) unveiled the Cardinal Health Connectivity Partner Program, designed to enable hospitals to improve data flow by interfacing Cardinal Health solutions with third party technologies.

Cardinal said it has reached agreements with several companies, including CardioPulmonary, CliniComp, Emergin, Misys Healthcare Systems and Philips Medical Systems, for the Alaris Gateway Partner Certification Program, the first certification available under the Conn-ectivity Partner Program.

The company said it is seeking additional partnerships to leverage the capabilities of the Alaris Gateway, which provides interface capabilities to hospital information systems, helping to improve medication safety by facilitating the exchange of IV medication infusion and patient monitoring data.

The Alaris System connects wirelessly with a central Alaris Server, which then transmits the infusion data through the Alaris Gateway to the hospital information system, creating “the first true IT-centric infusion information system,“ Cardinal said.

• Aperio Technologies (Vista, California), a provider of digital pathology systems, unveiled Spectrum, a web-based digital pathology information management system

Spectrum displays information in context, with gross (macro) images, micro digital slide images, reports, case histories, and other associated documents and images cross-linked and concurrently viewable. Pathologists, Aperio said, “are able to work through an entire case without having to get up to track down case information, or to wait for glass slides to be delivered. They can work remotely, even interactively, directing sectioning on gross tissue in real time. They can initiate automated image analyses and view the results, all within Spectrum.“

Dirk Soenksen, CEO of Aperio, said, “Spectrum is closely integrated with our ScanScope virtual microscopy systems and extends Aperio's existing suite of software into a powerful, scalable, web-based solution.“