Haemonetics Corporation (HAE.NYSE) announced the purchase of a technology underlying the TEG6s Hemostasis Analyzer System from CoraMed Technologies, including the intellectual property they had licensed previously on an exclusive basis in the field of hospitals and hospital laboratories.
TEG is short for thrombelastography, a laboratory test that measures how either viscous or elastic the changes are to a sample of blood during the clotting process. The system allows doctors to gather comprehensive and accurate data of a patient’s hemostasis condition, and allows the company to be able to pursue site of care opportunities outside the hospital setting.
“This acquisition is another step forward in our plans to accelerate growth in our Hospital business and execute against our customer-focused strategies. We now have the ability to explore potential new channels for the TEG 6s system both in hospitals as well as outside of hospitals, such as outpatient clinics, and expand our work to bring healthcare professionals and patients meaningful technologies that improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of care in some of the most critical areas of medicine,” said Stew Strong, president of Haemonetics.
Haemonetics is a global healthcare company working on a suite of hematology products and solutions to help customers improve patient care and reduce the overall cost of healthcare. Their technology is involved with blood and plasma component collection, the surgical suite and hospital transfusion services.
Doctor’s need not real-time awareness of a patient’s blood clotting ability, or hemostasis, and especially in an emergency or surgical setting, so they can maintain patient coagulation equilibrium. This problem cuts two ways. Not enough clotting means uncontrolled bleeding and too much clotting can mean can shut down the circulatory system. It’s much more complex than that, obviously, but that’s the basic nuts and bolts of it.
Oftentimes, hemostasis analysis is completed in a hospital’s central laboratory far away from the surgical theatre, but this arrangement is inefficient and wastes valuable time, requiring operating room staff to leave the surgical theatre to access these test results. The TEG6s changes that, giving doctor’s the ability to monitor a patient’s ability and make decisions based on the data.
TEG6s assays are performed in microfluidic cartridges designed for multiple TEG assays. Preparing the blood sample is simple, including no controlled pipetting or manipulation of reagents. Instead, the only requirement is to transfer to a small, unmetered amount of blood to the loaded cartridge from a sample tube with citrate or heparin.
“We have had a long, productive relationship with CoraMed and its founders, who are recognized experts in their field, and we are pleased that we are able to continue advancing the TEG 6s system’s presence in the market,” said Strong.
The TEG 6s system includes an analyzer, disposable cartridges and software. It is cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use with adults in cardiovascular surgery, cardiology procedures and adult trauma in the U.S. and is CE-marked and available internationally for adult where an evaluation of blood coagulation properties is desired.
—Joseph Morton