RFID Vendor PanGo Raises $10 Million in Series B Funding

From the press release:

Asset-tracking company
PanGo Networks Inc.
is expected to announce today [October 18, 2005] that it's raised $10
million in a Series B up round led by
Investcorp SA's
Technology Investment Group.
Joining
the Bahrain-based lead investor were previous investors
Columbia Capital
in Alexandria, Va., and
IDG Ventures Boston,
which lifted Framingham, Mass.-based PanGo's total
investment to $18.5 million. Mike Braatz, vice president
of business […]

Select Hospital's Experience with RFID

This story in CIO Insight uses Cisco's recent “introduction”
of the Clinical Connection Suite as a jumping off point to look at what
hospitals are doing with RFID. Not surprisingly, they're doing some
pretty interesting stuff. While not much is said about specialized
applications that benefit from RFID, like OR management software Surgical Information Systems or Picis, this story […]

Criticare Systems Licenses Technology to Nellcor

Criticare announces the
licensing of technology to Nellcore in this press
release. Sadly there's no mention of just exactly what technology was licensed — what better excuse could there be for some wild
speculation?
Both Nellcor
and Masimo have had SpO2 patient monitors and central stations for some time.
With JCAHO's 2003 National Patient Safety Goal #6 on clinical alarm systems
(recently
reduced […]

Interesting Sensor Company

Sensors for Medicine and Science, Inc.
provides sensors based on fluorescence sensing. Currently they offer an
oxygen sensor and glucose sensor. Founded in 1997, the vendor developed
proprietary technologies for optical sensors.

Current state-of-the-art optical
[…]

Picis Gives Customer Hospital-of-the-Year Award

Picis, the subject of recent acquisition rumors, names Rockingham Memorial Hospital
user of the year (press release). This may seem like another vacuous marketing gimmick
at first blush, but there's an interesting lesson to be drawn. Vendors
like Picis have complex and highly flexible products designed to
provide benefits to as broad a range of hospitals as possible. During
the […]

LoJack Explores Patient Tracking Market

LoJack Corp. of Westwood, Mass., is exploring
whether to market a version of its highly successful system that
locates stolen vehicles to track t-risk people, such as Alzheimer’s
patients. Because Alzheimer’s patients sometimes tear off valuables or
accessories such as cell phones or watches when they wander, the
tracking device would have to be secured to the person, said William
Duvall, […]

WLAN Quality of Service (QoS) Specification Approved

The IEEE has approved 802.11e late last month (Sept. 2005).

The 802.11e specification allows packets to gain priority by defining
four traffic classes, each with its own queue. By default, they would
be for voice, video, best-effort and background, said Ben Guderian,
vice president for market strategies and industry relations at
SpectraLink. The definitions of the four classes could […]

Understanding KLAS the Research and Consulting Firm

The HIStalk guy has been pretty hot lately with lots of interesting content. The following is an excerpt from his latest post in response to an email asking questions about the IT ranking firm KLAS.

Anonymous Reader II asks about KLAS: “I
am trying to understand the logic of the KLAS company and I am
confused. Given the […]

Cisco's Medical Grade Network Provides New Connectivity

On October 11th, Cisco broadcast a live webinar to introduce their Clinical Connection Suite (press release).
Of course Cisco makes the same network boxes for health care as they do for every other vertical market, but they create a vertical market spin with alliances, marketing and distribution. Cisco has done a service to the industry by […]

Grand Rounds 2:4

The blog Diabetes Mine is hosting Grand Rounds
today. This week's installment is nicely categorized by topic (IT,
Radiology, CCU, Admin & Policy, etc.).  Check it out!