Winning products in the 2001 Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA) competition were celebrated at a ceremony held earlier this month in conjunction with the Medical Design & Manufacturing East Conference and Exposition in New York City.
At the ceremony, gold and silver award winners in the annual competition were announced. In the category of in vitro diagnostics, a gold award was presented for the BenchMark automated histology staining system by Ventana Medical Systems Inc. (Tucson, AZ). A silver award went to the eScreen drugs-of-abuse testing device by eScreen Inc. (Overland Park, KS).
Ventana designed and manufactures the BenchMark system, which is used by laboratorians to stain tissue samples on glass microscope slides. It is the first histology instrument to automate the labor-intensive steps required in baking, dewaxing, cell conditioning, and staining tissue for the purpose of infectious-disease and cancer diagnosis.
"Winning an MDEA will most certainly help support Ventana's credibility in the marketplace," said Peter A. Riefenhauser, worldwide marketing manager at Ventana.
Murray I. Lappe, MD, the founder of eScreen, also expressed hopes for increased credibility as a result of winning an MDEA. "Investors will see this as a sign of success, and it's also a good touchstone—a reality check," he said. "We knew we had something really special. It's nice to know someone else thinks so too."
The entry from eScreen is the first digital point-of-collection drugs-of-abuse testing system cleared to market, and the first such product to receive FDA clearance under the agency's guidance for prescription workplace drugs-of-abuse tests.
Now entering its fifth year, the annual MDEA competition recognizes contributions and advances in the design of medical products.
The MDEA program is presented by Canon Communications llc, the publisher of IVD Technology. Sponsors of the 2001 competition are MedSource Technologies, DuPont Tyvek, Agion Technologies, Battelle, Avail, Colorado Medtech, IBA Medical Sterilization & Analytical Labs, and Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry magazine.
The deadline for entries in the 2002 MDEA competition is October 5, 2001. For further information about the MDEA competition, visit the program's Web site at http://www.MDEAwards.com [5]. —Susan Wallace
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