Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, California) and Partners HealthCare System (Boston) reported a one-year agreement for Agilent to provide microarray and gene expression products to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH; Boston, Massachusetts) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH; Boston, Massachusetts). Partners HealthCare is the parent organization for MGH and BWH.

Alliance Medical (Phoenix, Arizona), a reprocessor of single-use medical devices (SUDs), said that VHA (Irving, Texas), a cooperative of community-owned healthcare organizations, has renewed a three-year contract with Alliance, which will be one of two suppliers to offer medical device reprocessing services to VHA's nationwide network of hospitals. VHA's contract renewal with Alliance extends an agreement signed in August 2001.

Molecular Imaging (Los Angeles, California), a provider of molecular imaging services to healthcare entities in the U.S., has entered into a multi-year agreement with Signet Diagnostic Imaging Services Group (Boca Raton, Florida) to provide positron emission tomography (PET) scanning services using a PET/CT (computed tomography) unit which initially will service six of Signet's imaging centers located throughout Florida.

Novare Surgical Systems (Cupertino, California) a privately held developer of devices for tissue manipulation during cardiovascular, thoracic and peripheral vascular surgical procedures, has formed an exclusive distribution agreement with Medtronic (Minneapolis, Minnesota) for Novare's Enclose II Cardiac Anastomosis Assist Device used in off-pump and on-pump coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Medtronic's Cardiac Surgery Technologies division will distribute the Enclose II in Europe, Africa, Canada, South America and most of Asia. Financial terms were not reported.

Ramp Corp. (New York) said its wholly owned HealthRamp subsidiary and QRS Healthcare Solutions (QRS; Knoxville, Tennessee) have signed an agreement to promote HealthRamp's CarePoint suite of technology to prospective and existing customers of QRS' Paradigm: Practice Management Suite. One point of the agreement calls for QRS to create a proprietary interface to extract patient information from its Paradigm: Practice Management Suite for export to CarePoint. QRS is the exclusive manufacturer and sales and support resource of the Paradigm product. HealthRamp develops the CarePoint suite of technologies, which enables electronic prescribing, lab orders and results, Internet-based communication, data integration, and transaction processing over a hand-held device or browser, at the point of care.

Smith & Nephew Endoscopy (Andover, Massachusetts) and Tenet Medical Engineering (Calgary, Alberta) have signed an agreement under which S&N Endoscopy will become the exclusive marketer and distributor of Tenet Medical's limb positioners for use in arthroscopic surgery of the shoulder, elbow and wrist. The hydraulic-based Spider Limb Positioner and the T-MAX Beach Chair Positioner are designed to easily accommodate surgeon preference for patient positioning during surgery. Tenet Medical Engineering is a medical device development company specializing in advanced, adaptable and adjustable patient positioning solutions for orthopedic surgery.

Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, Pennsylvania) and Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA; Johnson City, Tennessee), the largest regional healthcare system in Northeast Tennessee, have signed an agreement for MSHA to implement a complete suite of Siemens clinical information technology solutions. MSHA consists of eight owned hospitals with 1,124 licensed beds and 60 affiliated hospitals and nursing homes. Included in the agreement are Siemens Soarian Common Clinicals, Soarian Cardiology, Soarian Clinical Access, Soarian Scheduling and Soarian Health Information Management components, as well as Siemens PDAccess (providing anywhere, anytime clinical computing via hand-held devices), Siemens Pharmacy and Med Administration Check, a system that uses bar code technology to alert nurses to potential medication administration errors. These clinical solutions will be implemented in three phases over the course of five years.

SourceOne Healthcare Technologies (Mentor, Ohio), a distributor of medical imaging systems, equipment, radiographic consumable supplies and services to healthcare facilities, and Del Medical Systems Group (Chicago, Illinois), a unit of Del Global Technologies (Valhalla, New York), have signed a contract giving SourceOne nationwide marketing, distribution and service rights to Del's radiography and imaging systems product lines. The agreement also enables SourceOne to offer all of Del's digital radiography systems..

Third Wave Technologies (Madison, Wisconsin) and Innogenetics NV (Gent, Belgium) have signed a four-year marketing and distribution agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Third Wave has granted Innogenetics the exclusive European marketing and distribution rights for select Invader molecular diagnostic products in the field of genetic testing. Innogenetics' European-wide sales organization will market and distribute a number of Invader clinical molecular diagnostic products for the genetic testing of risk factors in the areas of cardiovascular diseases, blood coagulation and hearing disorders. Innogenetic also may distribute other future genetics-related tests developed by Third Wave.