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CompuMed, Inc. (CMPD.OB), a medical technology company providing diagnostic, screening and telemedicine solutions, has announced an agreement with Osteometer MediTech, Inc.

a subsidiary of OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSIS), that enables CompuMed to provide a suite of bone densitometry solutions aimed at the point-of-care market.

As a result of this agreement, CompuMed also announced the launch of its OsteoCare™ initiative, under which primary care physicians and other healthcare providers can join the OsteoCare clinical network and access an integrated suite of osteoporosis screening technologies for point-of-care use. OsteoCare is aimed principally at primary care physicians at general practice, family practice, internal medicine and OB/GYN facilities, as well as certain specialists including rheumatologists, endocrinologists and orthopedists who provide care to patients at risk for osteoporosis.

The agreement will add Osteometer MediTech's peripheral dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (pDXA) bone densitometry systems to the products offered by CompuMed to measure bone mineral density (BMD), including CompuMed's OsteoGram® and Digital OsteoGram® systems.

"With our new OsteoCare initiative and the addition of its underlying Osteometer® bone densitometers to our OsteoGram technologies, CompuMed can now effectively offer physicians a set of best-of-breed osteoporosis applications at an exceptionally low cost that are easy to use," said Maurizio Vecchione, CompuMed's CEO.

The OsteoCare initiative aims to build a clinical network of primary care physicians and other healthcare providers who offer BMD screenings to their patients at risk for osteoporosis or other musculoskeletal health issues for which BMD measurements are useful. Physicians joining the OsteoCare clinical network receive a suite of BMD solutions that do not require a dedicated facility or specialized staff. These solutions are highly automated and based on clinically accurate bone density measurements that can be performed in about two minutes.

"By participating in CompuMed's OsteoCare clinical network, physicians in a range of primary care practices and other settings can provide BMD testing as part of routine patient care," said Mr. Vecchione. He added, "CompuMed is able to offer physicians participating in our OsteoCare clinical network an integrated BMD screening solution at a cost within reach of even the smallest medical practices." With its very low acquisition and operating costs, CompuMed estimates that participation in OsteoCare and access to its diagnostic solutions can become cost effective if used to screen only one patient per day. Reimbursement of screening procedures for patients with certain risk factors and performed with the modalities underlying OsteoCare is generally covered by Medicare as well as most private insurers.

"Our goal for the OsteoCare clinical network is to allow as many physicians as possible to screen and identify those patients at risk for problems associated with low bone mineral density," said Mr. Vecchione. "Once such patients are identified, they can be treated at the primary care level or referred for specialist care, including further evaluation or treatment at a traditional central DXA facility. Some studies have estimated that as many as 70 per cent of patients at risk for hip and spine fracture are undiagnosed until they suffer a fracture. Our aim is to diagnose osteoporosis well before it leads to a costly and debilitating fracture."

For the past few months, CompuMed has conducted a pre-market trial of the OsteoCare initiative and the OsteoMeter bone densitometer with primary care physicians and specialists in the Los Angeles area. The feedback received regarding the efficacy of screening, as well as improvements to workflow, reimbursement issues and overall impact on operations, has been incorporated into the current terms and structure of the OsteoCare initiative.

The Swezey Institute in Santa Monica, California, is among the pre-market participants of the OsteoCare initiative. According to Robert L. Swezey, M.D., the Institute's founder and medical director, "Osteoporosis is an enormous public health problem in the US today that remains significantly under-diagnosed, in large part because of the limited availability of bone density testing services. Therefore, we are very happy to be part of CompuMed's pre-marketing trial of a device that has the potential to help doctors everywhere screen patients at risk for osteoporosis at the point-of-care." Dr. Swezey added, "We are in the process of evaluating the pDXA as a clinical research tool. The potential is, therefore, for it to also be a useful instrument in this regard."