A Medical Device Daily

Adroit Medical Systems (Loudon, Tennessee) reported its award of a 36-month supplier agreement from Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina). The new agreement centers on Adroit's Soft-Temp hypo-hyperthermia blankets, localized heat therapy and cold therapy systems, including the popular HTP-1500. The HTP-1500 is the industry's only FDA 510(k)-approved mercury-free heat therapy pump.

More than 2,000 hospitals in the U.S. as well as more than 50,000 other healthcare facility sites buy many of their supplies and services through Premier's 1,300 contracts.

The new three-year Adroit contract follows a prior three-year arrangement, offering purchasing stability to Premier Alliance members and ensuring ongoing availability of increasingly adopted Adroit hypo-hyperthermia products and accessories.

Adroit products in the Premier contract include the Soft-Temp whole body hypo-hyperthermia blankets and localized temperature therapy pads, the MTRE CritiCool non-invasive induced hypothermia system, the HTP-1500 heat therapy pump and the Mobile ICE portable cold therapy system.

Xceed Molecular (Wellesley, Massachusetts), a developer of gene-expression analysis systems, said it has granted Gen-Probe (San Diego) and its affiliates a non-exclusive license to use Xceed's Flow-Thru Chip technology. Gen-Probe expects to incorporate the Xceed technology into its multiplexed molecular-diagnostics products.

Under terms of the agreement, Gen-Probe will pay up-front licensing and milestone fees to Xceed for non-exclusive access to Xceed's Flow-Thru Chip technology in specific fields. Gen-Probe also has the right to obtain co-exclusive rights (with Xceed) in pre-defined sub-fields.

In addition to continuing royalty payments, the agreement provides that Xceed will supply Gen-Probe with Xceed's custom TipChips, its Ziplex automated gene-expression system, and other Xceed products.

In other grants/contracts news:

• Aethlon Medical (San Diego) said it has submitted a contract proposal to a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) solicitation entitled; "Application of Platform Technologies for the Development of Therapeutic Agents for Biodefense."
  The solicitation (DMID-NIAID-NIHAI20080022BARDA) represents a partnership between the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the recently established Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to award contracts that fund the development of innovative approaches to treat bioterror and emerging pandemic threats.
• Axsun Technologies (Billerica, Massachusetts), a developer and manufacturer of photonic components and subsystems, said the company has entered into a multi-million dollar supply agreement with Lantis Laser (Denville, New Jersey). Under this multi-year exclusive agreement for Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) dental imaging, Axsun will supply the Integrated OCT Engine for Lantis' OCT Dental Imaging System, to be introduced to the market in 1Q09.
• BioE (St. Paul, Minnesota) and Cryobanks International (Altamonte Springs, Florida) said that Cryobanks has adopted BioE's PrepaCyte-CB Processing System for umbilical cord blood.
  Cryobanks stores umbilical cord blood stem cells for both public donation and private family use. Its U.S. operation has converted to BioE's proprietary cord blood processing system to obtain greater cord blood stem cell yields and improve processing efficiency. Cryobanks previously employed a hetastarch method to process cord blood units.
  "Using PrepaCyte-CB will enable us to set a new industry standard for processing and storing stem cells from cord blood," said Cryobanks COO Robert Gravely. "Our goal when processing cord blood, whether for donation or private storage, is banking the highest quality product possible. With PrepaCyte-CB, we can better ensure cord blood from our bank contains the highest stem cell yields available for families and transplanting physicians."
• iMDsoft (Boston), a provider of software solutions for the critical care and perioperative continuum, reported that Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC; also Boston) has selected MetaVision for its intensive-care units. BIDMC will use MV-ICU to improve patient safety, care quality, and clinical analysis. MetaVision replaces an existing critical care system and already is installed at 50 neonatal intensive-care unit beds and in a 12-bed medical intensive-care unit. MV-ICU will be deployed across all of BIDMC's seven intensive-care units.
  MetaVision is a fully-integrated, customizable solution for data collection and presentation, order management, clinical analysis, and decision support for the critical care continuum. The ability to design notes templates, embed Joint Commission requirements and clinical protocols, and measure clinical care quality were key reasons BIDMC decided to deploy MV-ICU.
• Medical Management Technology Group (MMTG; Troy, New York) reported an exclusive software licensing agreement with LogistiCare Solutions (Atlanta) to provide a custom transportation management suite for members of LogistiCare's transportation subcontractor network.
  This new browser-based set of software tools results from a joint development effort between MMTG and Provado Solutions, a LogistiCare software development subsidiary. The product has been tested by LogistiCare subcontractors in Nevada and Oklahoma and is now being offered for free to all 1100 LogistiCare providers nationwide.