Cytyc (Boxborough, Massachusetts) has entered into a multi-year agreement to place ThinPrep Imaging Systems within LabOne's (Lenexa, Kansas) laboratory in the Greater Kansas City area. This LabOne location is the highest-volume, single-site testing laboratory in the country, providing diagnostic testing to physicians, hospitals, managed care organizations and employers nationwide. The ThinPrep Imaging System combines imaging technology with human interpretive expertise to improve cervical cancer screening efficiency and performance.

Hatch Medical (Atlanta), a medical device incubator and technology brokerage firm, said it has entered into an agreement with physician inventor and interventional radiologist, Mark Saker, MD, to broker his patent-pending hemostatic agent delivery system. Saker's device uses proprietary technology and design elements that precisely and accurately deliver hemostatic agents which prevent bleeding complications by sealing tissue tracts following solid organ or lung biopsies. The technology is available and may be licensed or acquired by interested third parties through Hatch Medical.

HEI (Victoria, Minnesota) reported that its Advanced Medical Operations (Boulder, Colorado) unit has secured an exclusive contract with GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin) for the manufacturing and order fulfillment of its oximetry and respiratory gas products and accessories. GE Healthcare acquired the product line from Datex-Ohmeda (Madison, Wisconsin) as part of its acquisition of Instrumentarium (Helsinki, Finland), the parent company of Datex-Ohmeda HEI now will acquire certain Datex-Ohmeda assets and inventory from GE Healthcare to support the transition to HEI. HEI will manufacture and provide direct shipments to GE Healthcare's customers of all service kits and accessories related to their oximetry devices and respiratory gas products.

Natus Medical (San Carlos, California), which makes products for the detection, treatment and monitoring of common disorders in newborns, reported signing an exclusive three-year agreement with HealthTrust Purchasing Group (HPG; Brentwood, Tennessee), a healthcare group purchasing organizations, Natus is designated as the sole contracted provider of newborn hearing screening products to about 1,100 HPG member healthcare facilities.

Quill Medical (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) and Surgical Specialties Corp. (Reading, Pennsylvania), a provider of micro incision and wound closure technology, have entered into an exclusive manufacturing and distribution alliance in the field of aesthetic surgery. The two companies also said that FDA clearance has been obtained for the first product from their alliance, Contour Thread, a minimally invasive product for lifting skin based on Quill Medical's self-anchoring suture technology. Under the alliance, Surgical Specialties will manufacture and market worldwide Quill's suture technology for aesthetic surgery under the trade name Contour Thread. The companies also will collaborate to develop new products for aesthetic surgery applications. Financial terms were not disclosed. Quill Medical's products target diverse applications in the fields of wound closure, orthopedic and cosmetic surgery.

Recom Managed Systems (Los Angeles), an emerging life sciences company focused on the monitoring and detection of disease through continuous biomedical signal monitoring, said it has entered into a sponsored research agreement with Duke Clinical Research Institute (Durham, North Carolina) to evaluate the performance of the Recom Model 100 ambulatory ECG monitoring system. The market preference testing will establish the Model 100's performance against currently marketed ECG monitoring devices.

TDC Medical (Westborough, Massachusetts) and Creganna Medical Devices (Galway, Ireland) signed an agreement to use each other's resources in the design and manufacturing of medical devices. TDC provides a range of design, development and manufacturing services to medical device companies. Its focus is complex, hand-held devices used in many different medical specialties. Creganna delivery device solutions, focusing on minimally invasive devices.

Novation (Irving, Texas), the supply company of VHA (also Irving) and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC; Oak Brook, Illinois), and R2 Technology (Sunnyvale, California), a developer of computer-aided detection (CAD) technology, have signed a three-year agreement for VHA and UHC to purchase the R2 ImageChecker CAD system for mammography and the recently FDA-approved ImageChecker CT system for lung nodule detection on multi-detector CT exams. The three-year agreement took effect Nov. 1.

Spectranetics (Colorado Springs, Colorado) entered into a series of agreements with Elana BV (Utrecht, the Netherlands) providing for Spectranetics to supply laser systems and to develop and supply catheters. A cross-licensing arrangement of selected intellectual property rights also is part of the agreements. The products will be marketed by Elana for use in bypass surgery, initially focused on neurovascular applications. Elana (for Excimer Laser-Assisted Non-occlusive Anastomosis) is the only known surgical technique that enables surgeons to create a bypass without occluding the recipient vessel, ensuring continued blood supply during an operation, the company said.