A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

HemoSense (San Jose, California) has signed a co-marketing agreement with Standing Stone (Westport, Connecticut) to promote the use of that company’s web-based CoagClinic software with HemoSense’s INRatio PT/INR Monitor.

Together CoagClinic and INRatio can offer healthcare professionals a comprehensive PT/INR testing, documentation, and management system for anticoagulation patients taking warfarin, a blood-thinning drug.

The companies have agreed to develop co-branded advertising, joint marketing materials, and co-promotional sales initiatives in the U.S.

Developed by a hematologist and anticoagulation clinic director, CoagClinic streamlines the documentation and management of anticoagulation therapy by capturing and storing complete patient encounters, recording visit history, providing educational resources, and facilitating QA reporting and reimbursement. INRatio provides PT/INR test results using one drop of blood from a fingerstick at the point of care.

HemoSense makes hand-held blood coagulation testing systems for monitoring patients taking warfarin, an oral blood-thinning agent given to prevent potentially lethal blood clots.

The HemoSense INRatio system, used by healthcare professionals and patients themselves, consists of a small, portable monitor and disposable test strips. It provides measurement of blood-clotting time, or PT/INR values. Routine measurements of PT/INR are necessary for the safe and effective management of the patient’s warfarin dosing.

The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB; Seattle), an international non-profit research institute studying the application of systems biology, reported that it has been awarded two grants worth $13 million. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Seattle) awarded ISB $10 million in a challenge grant, and Amgen (Thousand Oaks, California) granted it $3 million for endowment and operations.

“Systems biology promises to open new doors for the discovery of drugs, and to permit new approaches to preventing disease,” said Roger Perlmutter, executive vice president for R&D at Amgen and chairman of the ISB board. “Amgen, by awarding this grant to the ISB, recognizes Lee Hood’s visionary role as a founding member of the Amgen Scientific Advisory Board 25 years ago, as well as the important work of the institute in furthering the development of personalized, predictive and preventive medicine.”

ISB integrates biology, computation and technology, enabling scientists to analyze all of the elements in a system rather than one gene or protein at a time.

Leroy Hood, ISB president and co-founder, said that the awards “provide critical support for a new Institute that is attempting to change the practice of biology and medicine in the 21st century.”

In other grants/contracts news:

• The Diagnostics Division of Bayer HealthCare (Tarrytown, New York), a member of the Bayer Group, said that it has signed an agreement with Premier Purchasing Partners, the group purchasing division of Premier (San Diego), to provide the alliance’s members with its full line of molecular products.

Premier is among the largest not-for-profit hospital and healthcare alliances in the U.S., with nearly 1,500 members and affiliates.

“This agreement with Premier will create a great opportunity to further our presence in the molecular diagnostic and research market,” said John Nosenzo, senior vice president and general manager North America, Bayer HealthCare, Diagnostics Division.

He said the agreement adds to the existing immunoassay, blood gas, glycated hemoglobin and urinalysis product line contracts that Bayer Diagnostics has with Premier.

Bayer’s molecular diagnostic portfolio for infectious diseases includes the Versant assays for the hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and human immunodeficiency vir-us, as well as the Trugene HIV-1 Genotyping Kit and Open-gene DNA Sequencing System.

The Bayer System 340 bDNA Analyzer, data management software and Versant assays comprise the first comprehensive assay system approved by the FDA for HCV and HIV viral load testing, the company said.

• Fonar (Melville, New York) reported signing its first group purchasing agreement for the Upright MRI with Mid-Atlantic Group Network of Shared Services (MAGNET; Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania) a group purchasing organization with coverage of the Northeast region and upper Midwest. The long-term accord calls for collaborative marketing efforts to MAGNET’s member organizations, including 775 acute-care hospitals, 5,400 physician practices/clinics and more than 100 free-standing imaging centers.

MAGNET was created to develop contracts on behalf of its members in the niche market of capital equipment.

• Sysmex America (Mundelein, Illinois) said it has received a contract to supply its pocH-100i and Sysmex XE-2100D hematology analyzers to Blood Centers of America in its blood-processing centers and donor collection sites across the country.

The XE-2100D will be used for quality control testing of prepared components such as packed red cells and platelet packs, while the pocH-100i will be used to screen donors so that donor center personnel can determine potential platelet yields from individual donors.

• iCAD (Nashua, New Hampshire), a provider of computer-aided detection (CAD) solutions, said that installations of its TotalLook system have been completed at mammography centers using each of the three currently available digital mammography systems – from GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin), Siemens Medical Systems (Malvern, Pennsylvania) and Hologic (Bedford, Massachusetts).

iCAD said TotalLook is a next-generation imaging solution, a comprehensive film-to-digital offering that converts prior film mammograms into digital form for comparison with current images from a digital mammography system.

• Toshiba America Medical Systems (Tustin, California) reported the 200th installation worldwide of the Vantage – a 1.5-tesla (1.5T) high-field MRI system equipped with an ultra-short, ultra-wide bore that delivers more patient-friendly exams and high-performance applications. The 200th installation occurred at Arango Imaging Center (El Paso, Texas), an outpatient imaging facility.

• BioLucent (Aliso Viejo, California), maker of the MammoPad breast cushion, reported that it has signed a contract with Baylor Health Care System (Dallas), for use of the MammoPad. The first Baylor facilities to provide MammoPad to all women receiving mammograms are Baylor Sammons Breast Imaging Center, the Baylor Sammons Mobile Breast Imaging Center and the Baylor Sammons Breast Imaging Center at North Dallas.

The facilities supply the breast cushion to all women presenting for mammograms, and Baylor breast center staff has received training on maximizing the advantages of MammoPad for patient comfort and breast positioning.