A Medical Device Daily

RaySearch Laboratories (Stockholm, Sweden) has signed a cooperation agreement with Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), covering research and development within the field of multi-criteria optimization for radiation therapy.

In all radiation treatments the clinician has to balance conflicting objectives such as obtaining a sufficiently high target dose to achieve tumor control, while ensuring that the dose to the surrounding healthy tissues is sufficiently low to minimize the risk for side effects. Multi-criteria optimization provides a tool for dealing with these tradeoffs in a stringent fashion.

The goal of the cooperation is to develop a software product that enables clinicians to explore and evaluate a representative set of treatment alternatives in a highly intuitive and efficient way. This has the potential to speed up the time-consuming treatment planning optimization process where currently the different parameters of a treatment plan are changed through trial and error until a satisfactory plan is found.

Manhattan Diagnostic Radiology (New York) reported that it will be the first imaging facility in Manhattan to offer Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) in the fight against breast cancer. This installation will provide Manhattan Diagnostic Radiology an increased ability to image and diagnose early-stage breast cancers, positively impacting cancer management. The technology provides unprecedented metabolic resolution down to 1.5 millimeters.

The PEM Flex scanner from Naviscan (San Diego) uses PET technology to produce high-resolution tomographic images of 1.5 millimeters resolution, allowing physicians to visualize breast tumors about the size of a grain of rice. The scanner is the size of a mammography unit and consists of two high-resolution detector heads which are placed in close proximity to the breast. Compared to the higher-force compression necessary for mammography, the PEM Flex scanner uses gentle breast immobilization.

In other agreements/contracts news:

Informatics Corporation of America (ICA; Nashville) said it has signed a supplier contract with Amerinet (St. Louis), a national healthcare group purchasing organization (GPO). Under terms of the agreement, ICA's interactive clinical portal is now included among the healthcare technology products Amerinet recommends to its member companies.

Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported that a new bone growth stimulators agreement has been awarded to DJO (formerly dj Orthopedics; Vista, California).

The 36-month agreement, effective July 1, 2008, is available to acute and continuum of care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.