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Study Finds Pay-For-Performance Doesn't Hurt Quality
A Veterans Affairs study found that people treated by doctors being compensated under pay-for-performance arrangements weren"t short-changed and received high-quality care. Health Day News reports that the study, which used data from both medical charts and patients" ratings of their care, "should reassure patients and the doctors who treat them." The study calms concerns that doctors might avoid patients who are very sick because their quality ratings and pay might suffer if they take the time to properly treat people with multiple conditions.
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Technology To Improve Accuracy Of Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis
Moffitt Cancer Center and Frantz BioMarkers, LLC have signed a license agreement on phospholipid biomarkers of ovarian cancer. Frantz BioMarkers, which has been granted exclusive worldwide rights to Moffitt"s interests in the biomarkers, will pay initiation, developmental milestone and license maintenance fees, and royalties on sales. Moffitt and Frantz BioMarkers will collaborate on ovarian cancer biomarker research, combining use of these licensed markers with lipid markers developed independently by Frantz BioMarkers.
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Race Plays Role In Diagnosis And Treatment
CNN reports that African Americans and whites are treated differently by doctors. "While it"s extremely difficult to tell in any given situation how much race -- consciously or unconsciously -- plays a role in a doctor"s decision making, multiple studies over several decades have found doctors make different decisions for black patients and white patients even when they have the same medical problems and the same insurance."
Medical Devices

Varian Medical Systems Acquires Assets Of IKOEmed And IKOEtech; Acquisition To Add Software For Accelerating Radiotherapy Treatment Planning

Varian Medical Systems, Inc., (NYSE: VAR) announced it has acquired the assets of Houston-based IKOEmed and IKOEtech, privately-owned suppliers of software used in the planning of radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments. The acquisition enables Varian to offer hospitals and clinics an additional software tool to automate and accelerate the most time-consuming portion of the treatment planning process. Varian is paying approximately $2.2 million plus an additional amount based on achievement of specified milestones to acquire the IKOE assets. The software is designed to achieve greater than 50 percent reduction in the contouring portion of the radiotherapy treatment planning process, which typically takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours. It automates the contouring process by matching patient images with pre-contoured images from an expert database created by renowned radiation oncologists. This eliminates the need for clinicians to manually outline between 10 and 20 organs in each of anywhere from 100 to 200 images of a patient"s disease site. "This is another important step in our ongoing initiative to make cancer treatments better, faster, easier, and more cost effective," said Tim Guertin, president and CEO of Varian Medical Systems. "This new tool should save a lot of time in planning for complex cases, particularly in cancers of the head and neck and lymph systems." The IKOE software, which has FDA 510(k) clearance, complements Varian"s existing segmentation tools currently used to automate planning for prostate, breast, and lung treatments. Varian will sell the software initially in the U.S. as a standalone product that will work with most radiotherapy treatment planning software products in the industry. The company plans to integrate it with its global market leading Eclipse™ treatment planning software for radiotherapy, radiosurgery, and brachytherapy. Varian anticipates the acquisition be neutral to earnings for the company in the current fiscal year and accretive thereafter. "We expect that our worldwide sales, service, and support network will contribute to faster and deeper market penetration for these software products," Guertin said. The IKOE software is now installed in about 20 sites, primarily in the U.S. Four IKOE employees and consultants are being offered jobs with Varian to support the product at Varian facilities in the U.S. Varian Medical Systems


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