Nine healthcare IT companies from New Zealand are taking a tour of the United States, in hopes of finding new markets for their products and getting a piece of the American healthcare reform pie.

The companies, chosen from 104 that participated in the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise Agency’s year-long “Focus on Health Challenge,” are visiting San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C. and Boston this month. They were selected by a seven-member international panel that included Harvard Medical School’s John Halamka and Jay Srini of Lifewire and SCS Ventures.

“New Zealand has the agility, as a small country, to expedite innovation in a way that larger countries, with multiple rules, regulations and bureaucratic processes, have difficulty doing," Srini says on the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise Web site.

“The finalists’ innovative products and services address current health problems and have the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes,” said agency officials in a press release. "The judges consider that the finalists represent world-leading health solutions that are capable of being marketed in the United States, the largest health market in the world."

According to the government agency, more than 90 percent of New Zealand’s general practitioners use electronic medical records and practice management software – the second-highest level of EMR adoption in the world, according to a 2006 study.

The companies currently touring the United States are:

• Airway, which has developed a high-fidelity, virtual reality bronchoscopy simulator designed to teach doctors safe airway management in difficult patients;

• B2P, a developer of products that enable the quick identification of bacterial contamination at all stages of the supply chain;

• Comprehensive Health, which has developed GASP (Giving Asthma Support to Patients), a Web-based clinical assessment and decision support tool for asthma management.

• Emendo, whose CapPlan software solutions are designed to help hospitals plan, monitor and manage unscheduled emergency patients as well as scheduled elective patients;

• INR Online, which offers an online platform that enables patients to manage their own Warfarin treatment plan from home, while still under close medical supervision;

• Matakina Technology, a developer of breast image analysis software;

• Mesynthes, whose Endoform Infection Control is a proprietary, ready-to-use tissue substitute for wound care and soft tissue reconstruction;

• Pictor, which has developed diagnostic technology for testing blood and other biological samples for a number of disease and infectious agents; and

• SIMTICS, which has developed a PC-based learning environment designed to integrate a virtual reality simulator with text, 3D interactive anatomy and high-definition video from experts.

All are hoping to follow the route taken by Orion Health, which has developed an international enterprise that includes offices in Boston and Los Angeles.

In a stop in San Francisco, Emendo CEO Dave Tinkler told local media that his company sells to more than 40 hospitals in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom and plans to reach the American market sometime this year.