NEW YORK – Liquid biopsy firm Biocept said it has entered into a laboratory services provider agreement with Beacon Laboratory Benefit Solutions, a provider of laboratory benefit management technology solutions to health and managed care companies in the US.
As part of its services to help health plans improve test ordering efficiency, appropriateness, affordability, and quality of care, BeaconLBS marks certain labs as Labs-of-Choice. Biocept President and CEO Michael Nall said in a statement that joining these ranks will mean more patients have access to its menu of products.
Caris Life Sciences announced that the University of Puerto Rico has become the 28th member of its Precision Oncology Alliance, a collaborative network of leading cancer centers dedicated to developing standards of care and best practices for precision oncology. Caris Vice Chairman Brian Brille said in a statement that UPR provides care for more than 25,000 patients each year and is a leader in clinical and scientific research "with a tremendous depth and breadth of data and clinical trial experience."
As part of the alliance, clinicians from UPR-affiliated hospitals will use the firm's Next Generation Profiling offerings and Molecular Intelligence platform to prioritize therapeutic options and clinical trial opportunities for their patients, and collaborate with other alliance members in precision medicine research.
PerkinElmer's board this week declared a quarterly dividend of $.07 per share of common stock, payable on Nov. 8 to shareholders of record at the close of business on Oct. 18.
Inform Diagnostics said this week it was told by American Medical Collection Agency that an unauthorized user had accessed its server, potentially exposing the personal and payment information of Inform Diagnostics' laboratory patients. Quest Diagnostics, Laboratory Corporation, and Clinical Pathology Laboratories had earlier announced they had been warned by AMCA of the data breach. Inform Diagnostics immediately suspended AMCA's services and is investigating. Information that may have been exposed include patients' names, credit card numbers, and other banking information, social security numbers, locations and dates of lab services, and referring physicians. Irving, Texas-based Informed Diagnostics said that it has no reason at this time to believe that any patient information has been misused. It did not say how many customers may have had their data breached.
CompuNet Clinical Laboratories said this week that it is mailing letters to patients whose information may have been taken in an incident involving unauthorized access to American Medical Collection Agency's systems.
AMCA provided billing collection services for CompuNet through its former joint venture partner Quest Diagnostics, which had earlier announced that it had been warned by AMCA of the data breach.
Some of the information on AMCA's system relates to services patients received from CompuNet, including some patients' names, dates of birth, dates of medical service, names of labs or medical service providers, referring doctors, health insurance information, and other medical information. In some cases, patients' social security numbers, credit card numbers, and bank account information were impacted. Laboratory results were not impacted by the incident.
CompuNet said it learned of the incident on June 5, and its own systems and databases were not impacted.
Drawbridge Health this week announced that it has completed a strategic international financing deal that bolsters its global initiatives. The firm said it is developing a blood sampling product that enables simplified collection and transportation of dried blood samples for clinical testing, and provides a way for healthcare providers to collect samples anywhere and anytime without requiring specialized training.
In the financing deal, new investors Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital were joined by current investors GE Ventures, Thorne Research, and Kyoto-iCap. Drawbridge declined to disclose the amount of the funding.
VolitionRx said this week that an existing investor has exercised the balance of a warrant to purchase $4.8 million in aggregate amount of the company's common stock at $3 per share. Volition will use the net proceeds for further product development, clinical studies, product commercialization, working capital, and other general corporate purposes.
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