Midmark names Jon Wells as president
Midmark Corp. announced Jon Wells as president, effective Sept. 15. He will continue to serve as Midmark’s chief commercial officer.
As president, Wells will work with the Midmark executive team to further solidify its strategy and execution, ensuring the delivery of its brand promise to “design seamless solutions that simplify and enable better care, wherever clinician and patient interaction occur.”
Wells has held numerous positions in product management, sales and marketing leadership, where as VP, he led the recent corporate rebrand initiative while streamlining and unifying the marketing strategy to a single brand. He currently holds the position of chief commercial officer, leading corporate sales, marketing, customer experience, and hospitality services.
Wells will report directly to Midmark CEO John Baumann.
The company says that this management structure will allow Baumann, as CEO, to remain focused on Midmark’s transformation, strategic direction and organic and inorganic investments in Midmark’s capabilities and long-term strategic priorities. Baumann will continue to serve on Midmark’s board of directors.
Quidel to update packaging of POC Sofia SARS Antigen test for COVID-19 to include either nasal or nasopharyngeal swabs
Quidel Corporation announced that labeling for Quidel’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Sofia SARS Antigen FIA has been amended to include either nasal or nasopharyngeal swabs. The new kit labeling, with the addition of a nasopharyngeal swab, allows Quidel to offer a second kit configuration to support the nasopharyngeal sample commonly performed in hospitals and helps alleviate some of the supply chain constraints around nasal swab-based kits.
Quidel’s Sofia SARS Antigen FIA has always been authorized for use with either nasal or nasopharyngeal swabs specimens. Due to customer preference, the Sofia SARS Antigen kit has been sold only with a nasal swab. The new kit configuration including nasopharyngeal swabs allows Quidel to increase its weekly delivery of the Sofia Antigen test.
“In our quest to do the most good during the novel coronavirus pandemic, offering our hospital customers another kit configuration with an NP collection device option allows us to work through some of the near-term nasal swab shortages we face to be able to ship more Sofia SARS Antigen FIA kits and thereby enable more patients to be tested,” said Douglas Bryant, president and CEO of Quidel. “We strongly believe that frequent testing using an accurate point-of-care antigen test allows for more successful implementation of contact tracing and self-isolation programs, which are key to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.”
Quidel currently sells the Sofia SARS Antigen FIA in the U.S. under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the FDA.
Baptist Health installing 432 Amazon Echo devices
Baptist Health (Little Rock, AR) is installing 432 Amazon Echo Show devices in potential COVID-19 patient rooms at nine of the healthcare system’s hospitals to offer a new and improved way that clinicians can visit with their patients through video communication. Echo Show devices and deployment support are being donated by Amazon as part of its $5 million global initiative to help healthcare workers, patients, students and communities impacted by COVID 19.
Baptist Health will be deploying these to units across the system that have the potential to have COVID-19 patients, which includes ICU areas, med-surg floors, emergency departments and labor and delivery rooms. The devices feature a speaker for two-way communication plus an 8-inch touch-screen display. The “Drop In” feature allows physicians, nurses, therapists and other clinicians to visit a patient’s room virtually. This allows caregivers to see the patient more frequently without having to go through the process of putting on personal protective equipment each time, which in turn also preserves PPE and adds a layer of safety for the staff.
Roche gets emergency approval for combination COVID-19, flu A/B test
Roche (Basel, Switzerland) announced that the cobas SARS-CoV-2 & Influenza A/B Test for use on the cobas 6800/8800 Systems received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This test is intended for the simultaneous qualitative detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2, Influenza A, and Influenza B in patients suspected by their healthcare provider of having respiratory viral infection consistent with COVID-19.
Roche’s widely-available, fully automated cobas 6800/8800 Systems, which are used to perform the SARS-CoV-2 & Influenza A/B Test, offer the fastest time to results with the highest throughput and the longest walk-away time available among automated molecular platforms, the company says.
The systems provide up to 96 results in about 3 hours and 384 results for the cobas 6800 System and 1,056 results for the cobas 8800 System in an 8-hour shift.
It is also available in markets accepting the CE mark.
Walmart remains committed to health center expansion
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said recently that the company remains committed to its roll out of Walmart Health brand centers to expand low-cost healthcare services to its U.S. customers.
Comments by McMillon and the head of Walmart’s U.S. operation came after the abrupt departure in August of Sean Slovenski who had been Walmart’s SVP of health and wellness for the last two years and oversaw the launch of what he called “super centers” for healthcare services.
The retail giant currently has clinics in Georgia and Arkansas, and plans to enter the Florida market in 2021. Like the handful of healthcare services “super centers” Walmart has rolled out in the last year in Arkansas and Georgia, the Florida facilities will feature an array of primary medical services, dental care, and behavioral health services as part of a new model being replicated into other markets.
The new, larger, clinics which are more than double the size of rival efforts by CVS Health and Walgreens are being launched in various sizes.
Clear link between heart disease and COVID-19; Long-term implications unknown
Severe damage to the lungs is one of COVID-19’s most harrowing effects, making breathing hard or impossible for those who’re severely affected, Intermountain Healthcare said in a post on its website.
However, evidence is mounting that COVID-19 also damages the heart, damage either caused by the virus itself, from inflammation triggered by the immune system’s response to the virus, or from increased clotting in heart vessels.
There is now evidence that heart damage may persist even after the patient recovers and, in some cases, that damage may be long lasting. Experts just don’t know how often the heart damage will occur at this point or whether it might affect people with only mild symptoms.
In a prospectus review published in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, Kirk U. Knowlton MD, from the Intermountain Healthcare Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, examined more than 100 published studies related to COVID-19 and its effects on the heart. While lung disease (severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS) has been the most consistent problem with the virus, Dr. Knowlton found that many patients also suffer significant cardiovascular damage that might also persist after they have otherwise recovered.
Dr. Knowlton points out that there is considerable evidence that the COVID-19 infection can damage the heart in hospitalized patients via several mechanisms, including myocarditis. However, less is known about the effects of the virus on the heart in patients that do not require hospitalization or in those that do not develop significant lung disease.