A Medical Device Daily
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston) will add Elekta's (Stockholm, Sweden) Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion, a radiosurgery device specifically designed to treat one or more lesions in the head in a single session, to their radiation oncology department.
"Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion suits our clinical needs," said Eric Chang, MD, Director of M.D. Anderson's central nervous system stereotactic radiation program. "The device will be used initially to treat primary brain and skull base tumors as well as single and multiple brain metastases in a single session."
Designed to extend the system's reach down to the level of the skull base and cervical spine, Perfexion is scheduled to be delivered to M. D. Anderson this month and should be operational by mid-2009.
In other agreements/contracts news:
• Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego) reported new agreements for medical nutrition products: feeding pumps, sets, devices and tubing have been awarded to Kimberly-Clark Global Sales (Dallas), Abbott Nutrition (Abbott Park, Illinois), Baxa (Englewood, Colorado), Covidien (Mansfield, Massachusetts) and Corpak MedSystems (Wheeling, Illinois).
Effective Feb. 1, the 36-month agreements are available to acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.
• Edmond Scientific (ESC; Fairfax, Virginia) has been awarded a contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Information and Technology to provide architecture and engineering services to support the external integration of VA information systems with other healthcare entities.
ESC engineers will support the integration of the VA's large-scale information systems with the Department of Defense military health systems. The work will also provide for development and migration to standards-based integration with multiple government and private sector health entities through the Nationwide Health Information Network.