Briefs

Sunrise fills vacant sales and marketing slots MEDTRADE - Sunrise Medical has promoted from within to fill senior executive positions vacated by the death in July of its vice president of marketing and the transfer to Canada of its vice president of sales. Pieter Leenhouts, who previously worked in the company's standards products division, took over as vice president of marketing two weeks ago, filling a void opened by the unexpected passing of Harvey Diedrich. Ken Yannerella, who has managed Sunrise Medical's major accounts, will share the title of senior vice president of sales with Roxane Cromwell, who was the company's vice president of global quality. They replace Michel Papillon, who has returned to Canada for Sunrise. MIA buys rights from Aerogen MEDTRADE - Medical Industries America has paid Aerogen $2.5 million for the rights to manufacture and market the Mountain View, Calif.-based Aeroneb Go nebulizer, the companies announced here. The Go nebulizer features Aerogen's OnQ aerosol generator, a technology that MIA hails as “next-generation” and that reportedly improves drug delivery efficiency, ease of use and cost-effectiveness. While nebulizers are largely used in the home care setting as a means of delivery for respiratory medications such as albuterol and ipratropium, the Aerogen device makes possible the delivery of all kinds of medicine, according to MIA's Ralph Spang. Respironics, PARI Team up for nebulizers MEDTRADE - Respironics and PARI Respiratory Equipment have combined their compressor and reusable nebulizer systems to create a new aerosol drug delivery product for the treatment of COPD, asthma and other respiratory diseases. Under the agreement announced here, Respironics will retain exclusive U.S. rights to package and sell PARI's LC Plus resuable nebulizer with a compressor and the LC Plus nebulizer and accessories as a stand-alone package. Resuable nebulizers command about 2-4% of a nebulizer market that is still dominated by disposable nebs. PARI said reusable nebs are about three times more effective at delivering nebulized medicine.