A Medical Device Daily

Abaxis (Union City, California), a medical products company making point-of-care blood analysis systems, reported entering into a distribution agreement with Cardinal Health (Dublin, Ohio) to sell the Piccolo Xpress blood chemistry analyzer and medical reagent discs.

"This relationship will provide us the opportunity to expand market coverage within the point-of-care product segment," said Chris Bernard, VP of sales and marketing for Abaxis. "It will also provide us the opportunity to improve our understanding of the ambulatory market and further extend the reach of our sales force."

Abaxis develops portable blood analysis systems for use in any veterinary or human patient-care setting to provide clinicians with rapid blood constituent measurements. The system consists of a compact, 6.9 kilogram (15 pounds), portable analyzer and a series of single-use plastic discs, called reagent discs that contain all the chemicals required to perform a panel of up to 13 tests on veterinary patients and 14 tests on human patients. The system can be operated with minimal training and performs multiple routine tests on whole blood, serum or plasma samples. The system provides test results in less than 14 minutes with the precision and accuracy equivalent to a clinical laboratory analyzer.

In other agreement news: ZixCorp (Dallas), a provider of hosted services for email encryption and e-prescribing, reported that Virtua Health (Marlton, New Jersey) has signed a three-year contract for 9,000 users with CynergisTek for ZixCorp's Email Encryption Service. CynergisTek offers ZixCorp's encryption service as part of its technology portfolio to the healthcare and finance industries, the company said.

ZixCorp said it now secures business communications for more than 40% of New Jersey hospitals. Virtua employs 7,200 personnel and has 1,800 physicians as medical staff members. Virtua has been recognized as one of the first Six Sigma organizations in healthcare, as an early adopter of clinical and digital technologies, and for its innovative partnerships with nationally renowned organizations, the company said. ZixCorp enforces corporate email security policies to ensure secure handling of confidential information, including a pre-configured lexicon that automatically detects and encrypts protected health information. ZixCorp said it would help Virtua further reduce the risk of data leaks and eliminate potential security flaws.

CynergisTek provides information security management, regulatory compliance, technology audit, secure IT infrastructure design, and technology selection solutions for the healthcare, financial services and real estate industries.

Virtua Health is a multi-hospital organization.