American Healthways (Nashville, Tennessee) signed a three-year agreement with Horizon Healthcare Services (HHS; Newark, New Jersey), and its subsidiary, Horizon Healthcare of New Jersey, to provide the company's disease management program for Horizon's fully insured commercial and Medicare+Choice members with congestive heart failure. An estimated 7,500 eligible Horizon members will begin receiving services on Jan. 1.

Cardiome Pharma (Vancouver, British Columbia), and Fujisawa Healthcare (Deerfield, Illinois) the U.S. subsidiary of Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Co., said they executed a $68 million strategic partnership agreement for the co-development and Fujisawa Healthcare's exclusive commercialization of Cardiome's intravenous antiarrhythmic agent, RSD1235. The companies will co-develop RSD1235 as an intravenous formulation for the treatment of atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter for North American markets.

Coronado Industries (Fountain Hills, Arizona), a manufacturer of pneumatic devices for the treatment of glaucoma, has completed negotiations with EuPharmed (Rome, Italy) which expand the geographic area of their current agreement to include the exclusive territories of Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia.

Guidant (Santa Clara, California) reported an agreement with Starion Instruments (Saratoga, California) to license tissue-welding technology for use in its next-generation cardiac surgery products to advance endoscopic vessel harvesting procedures. Terms were not disclosed. The Starion tissue-welding technology will be used initially in Guidant's Vasoview Endoscopic Vessel Harvesting System, which it says is used in more than 75% of endoscopic vessel harvesting procedures.

Novation (Irving, Texas), the supply company for VHA and the UHC hospital groups, together with Alaris Medical Systems (San Diego, California), provider of solutions for medication safety, disclosed a new-technology agreement for the Alaris Medley Medication Safety System with its Guardrails Safety Software. The Medley System is a modular point-of-care platform that integrates infusion, patient monitoring and clinical best practice guidelines for optimal outcomes. At the core of the Medley Medication Safety System is the Guardrails Safety Software, which provides an automatic safety net for infusion programming focused on medication error-prevention at the critical point of IV delivery to the patient.