Sorin Begins Commercialization of Cardio EMR

Sorin Group has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its new perfusion electronic charting system, Connect. The company will begin U.S. commercialization immediately.

Connect is designed for recording real-time data and visualizing trends aimed at supporting clinicians and institutions in their perfusion management and documentation goals both during and after cardiac surgery. During the surgical case, all relevant information related to the patient and perfusion are electronically collected from Sorin’s heart lung machines and autotransfusion systems, as well as a variety of other patient monitoring devices, allowing the creation of an electronic medical record for each patient. Statistical tools are available for queries and analysis after surgery to support clinicians’ efforts towards hospital quality management and practice improvement programs.

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) have been proven to improve quality of patient care, decrease human errors associated with medical practice and control healthcare expenditures. Adoption of EMR is expected to significantly and rapidly increase in the near future, starting with the United States. The Obama administration mandated that all medical records in the United States be converted to the electronic format by 2014. While the United States are early adopters of digital technologies and will continue to drive adoption faster than other geographies, due to the rapidly changing health care scenario, Europe and emerging countries are expected to follow closely.

“Connect makes data management during cardiopulmonary simple and the addition of [Sorin’s] GDP Monitor (goal directed perfusion) offers a new level of physiological control in line with goal directed therapy,” said Paul Exton, senior clinical perfusionist at University Hospital South Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.

“The commercial availability of Sorin Connect represents an important milestone of Sorin Group’s strategic innovation program,” said Michel Darnaud, president of Sorin’s cardiac surgery business unit. “We are excited to launch the first element of an entirely new cardiopulmonary system connecting our disposable products to our [hierarchical linear models], providing clinicians and institutions an unprecedented solution for their cardiopulmonary patients.”

Sorin focuses on technology for cardiovascular diseases. The company is headquartered in Milan, Italy, with U.S. offices in Arvado, Colo.