RITA Medical Systems (Mountain View, California) reported it filed its Form 10K for the year ended Dec. 31, 2004, on March 31. The company said on March 16 that it had requested a two-week filing extension (Medical Device Daily, March 17, 2005).

RITA Medical makes radio frequency ablation systems for treating cancerous tumors, as well as percutaneous vascular and spinal access systems.

Impac, Synovate in onocology audit

Impac Medical Systems (Mountain View, California), a provider of information technology solutions for oncology care and part of the Elekta Group, and Synovate Healthcare, a specialist division of global research firm Synovate (Chicago), say they will collaborate to form "the world's first truly global cancer therapy audit." Synovate will license aggregated and de-identified data collected from users of Impac's oncology EMR and cancer registry systems to provide de-identified information to pharmaceutical and biotech companies to further oncology research.

"This alliance will enable us to expand our current data collection methods from paper to electronic . . . allowing us to better analyze, understand, and extrapolate trends and outcomes in oncology care," said Michael Spedding, CEO of Synovate Healthcare.

Joseph Jachinowski, president and CEO of Impac, said, "Sharing the longitudinal data collected from the National Oncology Database . . . is a significant development in market research that ultimately will be demonstrated with improved patient care."

Synovate, the market research arm of Aegis Group (London), provides a suite of research solutions.