A Medical Device Daily

Neoteric Technology (Vancouver, British Columbia) and Mediware Information Systems (Lenexa, Kansas) reported that they have completed an agreement under which Mediware will market Neoteric’s Bloodtrack transfusion administration and tracking components in North America and integrate these technologies into HCLL, Mediware’s next-generation blood transfusion management system.

The companies said their agreement will provide hospitals, clinics, correctional institutions, blood centers and other public and private healthcare institutions with a closed loop environment for transfusion information to increase patient safety practices, lower costs and improve efficiencies and productivity of the entire blood transfusion process.

Neoteric’s blood management products, which will be marketed by Mediware in North America under the BloodSafe brand name, will extend Mediware’s HCLL transfusion management system and enable better control of blood products within the hospital and ensure that blood is transfused to the right patient following the right procedures at the bedside. This will improve the blood banks’ ability to manage blood inventory while increasing patient safety.

“Neoteric’s FDA cleared, wireless transfusion management technologies will extend the reach of Mediware’s world-leading blood bank system throughout the facility and to the patient’s bedside for improved patient safety and traceability,” said Geof Auchinleck, president of Neoteric.

“More than two thirds of transfusion errors are a result of activities that occur outside the four walls of the blood bank,” said John Damgaard, COO of Mediware. “By combining Neoteric’s revolutionary remote allocation and bedside administration capabilities with HCLL in the blood bank, healthcare providers have a powerful patient safety advantage.”

HCLL Transfusion has been licensed by more than 300 leading facilities worldwide in less than four years since its commercial introduction, according to the company.

Founded in 1997, Neoteric Technology provides healthcare products to more than 100 hospitals in Europe and North America.

Mediware targets three primary areas of patient care: medication management, perioperative management and blood management (transfusion, inventory and donor practices).

In other agreement news:

• Inviro Medical Devices (Atlanta) said it has entered into a new agreement with Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego) that provides members of the Premier alliance continuing access to Inviro’s portfolio of InviroSNAP! safety syringe products. Inviro’s initial agreement was awarded as part of Premier’s Technology Breakthroughs Program, effective May 1, 2007; the new agreement is a three-year contract effective Oct. 1, 2007.

“Since the announcement of our Breakthroughs Programs contract award in May, we have had great support from Premier management and tremendous interest from its member facilities in our InviroSNAP! range of safety syringes,” said Jim Charlesworth, senior VP of sales for Inviro Medical Devices. “This new three-year contract allows us to plan for the development of a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship with Premier.”

“Premier’s Breakthroughs Program and contracting process provides great opportunities for small companies with truly differentiated technologies,” said Gareth Clarke, CEO of Inviro. “We are delighted with this new agreement and look forward to developing significant business within the Premier organization.”

Inviro Medical Devices engineers and markets safe medication delivery systems, including the InviroSNAP! safety syringe. During the second half of 2007, Inviro will add the InviroSTRIPE feature to its full range of safety and standard syringes. InviroSTRIPE is an integral write-on stripe that allows critical information to be recorded directly onto the syringe barrel, the company said.

“The addition of the stripe feature to InviroSNAP! safety syringes will provide Premier members with the opportunity to address two problems with one product; employee safety and syringe labeling,” Clarke said. “We are confident this will provide a winning combination for Inviro Medical, Premier and its membership.”

Serving 1,700 hospitals and nearly 46,500 other healthcare sites, Premier bills itself as the largest healthcare alliance in the U.S. dedicated to improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care.

• NuGEN Technologies (San Carlos, California), a privately held company that develops highly sensitive nucleic acid amplification and labeling systems, and Kreatech Biotechnology (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), maker of labeling products for diagnostic and research applications, reported an agreement that will enable NuGEN to market FL-Ovation cDNA Fluorescent Modules designed to complement its family of Ovation RNA amplification products. Together, the systems will provide life science researchers with a flexible and sensitive RNA sample preparation workflow for use on Agilent DNA microarrays for gene expression analysis, the companies said.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Kreatech will supply components for a NuGEN-validated fragmentation and labeling system for one- and two-color microarray analysis using its Universal Linkage System (ULSTM) technology for labeling with Cy3 and Cy5 mono NHS esters licensed by NuGEN from GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK). The NuGEN FL-Ovation cDNA Fluorescent Modules, along with the NuGEN Ovation RNA amplification family of products will help researchers unlock discoveries hidden within a broad range of samples including FFPE, LCM, blood, saliva, tissue biopsies, and others, according to the companies.