medicaldesign

In the press release announcing the St. Louis Rams would be playing three regular-season games in London over the next three seasons, the NFL called it an “unprecedented step that begins the next chapter” of the NFL’s international outreach. Maybe because it is ‘unprecedented,’ the NFL and the Rams apparently forgot to check if anybody had a problem with it. Anybody? Yes, the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission has a problem with it. “Having the Rams play a game in London will elevate an awareness of St...

Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) announced Friday that it will begin to sell minimally invasive cardiac surgery instruments as part of a distribution agreement with a design company based in Florida.

Miami Instruments designs surgical instruments for minimally invasive cardiac procedures, and Medtronic said that it is launching two of Miami Instruments’ products in the U.S. Terms of the distribution agreement were not disclosed.

The two products are: the Joseph Lamelas Knot Pusher, which aims to “simplify the delivery and tying of suture knots in the heart during minimally invasive cardiac procedures” and the Joseph Lamelas Atrial Lift System, which can be used to “retract the atrial wall during limited-access cardiac surgical procedures,” according to Medtronic.

“Medtronic is pleased to join with Miami Instruments to bring cardiac surgeons the specialized surgical instruments they need to perform MICS procedures on behalf of their patients,” said John Liddicoat, senior vice president, Medtronic and president of the Structural Heart business, in a news release. “This agreement will allow us to continue providing physicians with the most innovative minimally invasive heart valve replacement and repair technologies.”

The products are named after Dr. Joseph Lamelas, founder of Miami Instruments and cardiac surgeon, and chief of cardiac surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida. They will be used in heart valve repair

Miami Instruments’ products will be part of Medtronic’s Structural Heart business that saw revenue increase 8 percent to $266 million in the quarter ended Oct. 28.

Diagnostics company LipoScience, which is in the midst of plans for an initial public stock offering, now has a new chief operating officer.

Timothy Fischer joined LipoScience in 2010 as the company’s vice president of research and development. Now as COO, Fischer will continue overseeing R&D as well as commercial operations and medical affairs.

Fischer brings to his new post more than 25 years of experience, particularly in in vitro diagnostics. Before joining LipoScience, Fischer was vice president of development for the women’s health and cancer business at Becton Dickinson (NYSE:BD).

Raleigh, North Carolina-based LipoScience has developed and commercialized a blood test for cardiovascular disease. The test uses nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, to measure the density of lipoproteins in a sample. The company says NMR offers a better test for cardiovascular disease than standard cholesterol tests.

LipoScience last summer filed plans for an initial public offering of stock that could raise up to $86.2 million. According to the most recent filing, the NMR tests generated $21.7 million in revenue in the first half of 2011, a 12.4 percent increase compared to the first six months of 2010.

LipoScience is currently seeking 510(k) clearance for its Vantera system, which tests the blood samples at the site of a research lab or healthcare facility. Right now, samples must be sent to LipoScience’s Raleigh facility for testing. Vantera could broaden the use of such testing by making testing capabilities available in more locations.

Medical device company nContact, a developer of products to treat arrhythmias, has raised close to half a million dollars.

The Morrisville, North Carolina company secured a total of $433,761 in debt financing from one investor, according to securities filings. That’s a small amount compared to the company’s venture capital haul to date; nContact has rasied more than $42 million in financing, including a 2010 $16 million series D round from venture capital firms Harbert Venture Partners, Intersouth Partners, Harbert Venture Partners, Finistere Ventures, Massey Burch Capital and ZMV Associates.

Founded in 2005, nContact focuses on developing catheters and surgical ablation devices for arryhthmia treatment, including atrial fibrillation. The company has developed a way to perform minimally invasive ablation procedures to treat arrhythmias. The devices can work on a beating heart without chest incisions or ports. NContact’s device treats patients with enlarged atria, a group representing the majority of atrial fibrillation patients.

When it comes to preparing for the Super Bowl, forget who’s playing who, I’m more interested in the commercials. For this year’s game, the nation’s largest brewer is serving up commercials with a more sophisticated taste, leaving the exaggerated humor on the shelf. Anheuser-Busch, the game’s exclusive beer advertiser, will promote its new Bud Light Platinum during the first two of its six Super Bowl ads. The two 30-second spots will reveal a more “serious and stylish tone while touting a triple-filtered, smooth finish, too-shelf taste”, according to Ad Age...

With recent investments and pilot projects announced, Aetna, along with WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group and their competitors, say they are serious about being a major part of the mobile heath movement.

Aetna purchased iTriage, formerly Healthagen, the maker of the popular iTriage app, for an undisclosed sum in September 2011. The app allows the user to enter symptoms to check them against common diseases and learn more about a given procedure or diagnosis and check for nearby physicians, clinics and hospitals.

WellPoint and Verizon Wireless launched a pilot program in which 100 WellPoint members with chronic diseases are given a smartphone and assigned a coach whom the member is invited to contact any time, day or night — not just by phone call, but by videoconferencing over the 4G network. 

UnitedHealth Group announced Jan. 9 that it launched a series of partnerships with mobile technology companies. Among them: CareSpeak, which offers a two-way texting application for medication adherence

All of the large health plans say they aren’t interested in replacing physicians with an app but rather helping members figure out when a doctor’s care is necessary, then connecting the patient and doctor using mobile technology.

press release | AMA news | www.itriagehealth.com

Employees at ARCO Construction Co. Inc., ranked eighth on this year’s list of St. Louis’ largest general contractors, spent last week moving into the company’s new headquarters building in Rock Hill, a transition President and CEO Jeff Cook called a “game changer.” ARCO posted $217.5 million in revenue last year, and Cook plans to see that number rise in 2012. “Decision-makers appear to be making decisions to deploy capital and reinvest into their businesses,” he said. “We are cautiously optimistic, anticipating significant revenue growth in 2012 from the pent-up demand of the last two-plus years...

When news came a few weeks ago that Coors Light had passed up Budweiser to become the No. 2 beer in the U.S., it was the first time since 1993 that Anheuser-Busch wasn’t in control of the top two spots. But experts (and A-B spokespeople) were quick to point out that the fall of Budweiser had little to do with corporate strategy or marketing. It was just a reflection of a decades-long consumer trend away from full-calorie beers to light beers, craft brews and spirits. And A-B has been aware of that trend as well...

It was a packed house at the State of St. Louis event this morning at the Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel, hosted by the St. Louis Business Journal. Key speakers including, Mayor Francis Slay, St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley, St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann and St. Clair County Chairman Mark Kern were all in attendance. What was the overall theme of event? For me it was an increased partnership across the region. On the Illinois side, in St. Clair Country, Kern said economic progress is being made...

Jeff Quinn can take a lot of personal satisfaction in the sale of Solutia Inc. to Eastman Chemical Co. for $3.38 billion. When he became Solutia’s president and chief executive in 2004, it was a bankrupt specialty materials and chemical company hoping to reorganize itself in two years. That reorganization took twice as long as hoped, but Quinn successfully guided it out of bankruptcy in 2008. To get there, he had to freeze pension plans, cut benefits and lay off employees. “The cost cutting was probably more meat ax than surgical,” he said at the time...

DrChrono, which offers one of the first electronic health records (EHR) apps built specifically for the iPad, raised $2.8 million this week led by return-backer Yuri Milner, founder of DST Global, with participation from one of Google’s search quality leaders, Matt Cutts. The investment builds on the $650,000 Milner contributed to last summer. A month before that, [...]

In the initial review of Surgical Intern Survival Guide , we concluded that the app was a simple starting point that could help the fresh surgical interns get their bearings.

In the few months since our review, the authors have given the app a facelift, in both appearance and content.

On that same plane, the app (which was only available for the iPhone a few months ago) is now also available for the iPad.

The app’s updates are apparent from the home screen. Along with some notable additions in categories, the organization of the app has also been improved. In the previous version the home screen was cluttered, and seemed thrown together.

The reorganization now includes more subcategories, but allows the app to flow in a more logical manner from the home screen. The tabs at the bottom of the screen remain the same, with improvements in some.

The new categories are geared more towards surgical interns; Sutures/Needles, Basic Instruments, Meshes. These categories along with the new OR Etiquette section are especially useful for those, such as medical students, who are new to the surgical realm.

There is also a new ability to create and save notes within the app.

The content of the app is now a bit more comprehensive, ranging from more topics in the “Common Floor Calls” and “Sample Dictations” to the previously mentioned new topics. (As a side-note, the Sample Dictation section can be used as a base to understand the step-by-step procedure that is to be performed. This is really a great way for any medical student to gain insight into surgical procedures.)

In the initial version, the formulas tab only contained 10 formulas. There is a mild improvement, with an attempted expansion in the number of surgically relevant formulas, criteria, and calculations presented. But the section remains purely a list of these formulas, with peculiar choices; from very broad (Cardiovascular with basic physiologic formulas) to very specific (MELD Score/Childs Classification).

The authors also addressed one of the main concerns in the previous version; the formatting. There is a notable improvement in the layout of the text portion, however the newly introduced instruments (images and captions) required some zooming and manipulating on the iPhone.

The iPad version is similar, but as expected, the larger screen helps with reading text, and the instrument images and captions seemed better suited to view on the iPad during the review.

Price:

• Currently $2.99 from the Appstore

Likes:

• Notable improvements in design and content
• New sections (Instruments, suture/needles, meshes) improve surgical relevance

Dislikes:

• While most of the formatting issues have been addressed, there still remain some issues
• Formulas, while increased in quantity, remain a work in progress

Inclusions that would improve the app:

• Getting greedy here, but the inclusion of other items (for example: vascular grafts and laparoscopic instruments)
• Suggested readings/resources for surgical topics

Conclusion:

• The improvements/new additions raise the stock of the app in our eyes. The app’s utility has broadened, and now can also be used by a range of people (medical students to surgical interns), and the app remains an affordable purchase for these populations.
• We look forward to seeing what other improvements the authors make in the future

iTunes Link

Happtique, an online mobile health application marketplace, has announced it will develop a certification program to vet mobile applications for doctors, nurses and patients.  The organization created the program based on feedback from providers and hospitals, Corey Ackerman, Happtique president, told eWEEK. Happtique will evaluate which applications are appropriate for clinical use and those that are outdated or poorly built.

The program will be funded by charges levied on app developers.  According to Happtique representatives, evaluation criteria will include functionality, usability and security.  Any application, whether it is in the Happtique mobile application store or not, is eligible to be reviewed by the organization.  Happtique also stated it plans to provide constructive feedback for application developers on how to make their applications better, rather than criticizing applications publicly. If an application fails, they can reapply, but their failure may or may not be made public based on the panel’s decision.

press release | www.happtique.com

Regenerative medicine company Juventas Therapeutics is touting the results from 12-month data of a phase 1 clinical trial of heart failure patients.

At 12 months, heart failure patients treated with the company’s stem cell therapy showed “significant” improvements in two key measures — a six-minute distance-walking test, as well as the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire, a patient self-assessment of how heart failure affects daily life.

Dr. Marc Penn, Juventas’ founder and chief medical officer, said the results of the trial suggest the company’s therapy is “inducing fundamental changes in the heart of treated patients,” according to a statement from Cleveland-based Juventas.

The company’s technology, JVS-100, works by recruiting stem cells from the bone marrow to create new blood vessels and prevent ongoing cell death at the site of a patient’s injury.

Juventas has plans in the works for two phase 2 clinical trials. It’s preparing to enroll heart failure patients in a trial that it hopes further illustrates the efficacy of its technology. In addition, Juventas has already begun enrollment in a phase 2a trial that will assess the safety and efficacy of JVS-100 in critical limb ischemia patients.

Another Cleveland company founded by Penn, SironRX Therapeutics, is developing the JVS-100 technology for a different application: wound healing. The two companies share the same CEO, Rahul Aras.

[Photo from flickr user kurtislizaandchauncey]

One major contributing factor to the skyrocketing cost of health care in the US is the high rate of readmission among patients.

A recent Dartmouth Atlas Project report found that 2009 30-day surgical readmission rates were 12.9 percent, unchanged from 2004, while 30-day medical readmission rates rose to 16.1 percent in 2009 from 15.9 percent in 2004.

The study also found that patients failed to see a primary care physician within two weeks of discharge, a step that can often help avoid readmission and improve outcomes.

Pipette (@usepipette) is using mobile technology to try and address this problem and enable clinicians to keep close tabs on their patients during the critical 30-day period following discharge from inpatient setting. Their mobile application suite, which covers 100 percent of mobile devices using a variety of SMS, native apps and web apps, enables clinicians to passively capture crucial patient feedback regarding their day-to-day recovery.

The goal behind Pipette’s platform is to provide payers and providers a system that reduces costs, improves patient care and enables a reliable and effective method for improving patient compliance and outcomes. The best word to describe the company’s platform is “empowering”, both patients and clinicians, to take control of the recovery process.

Pipette was a member of the first class of startups at the Rock Health incubator and one of the few in that group with a clinical orientation. Co-founders Ryan Panchadsaram (@rypan) and Jimmy Do (@jimmydo) saw a clear opportunity to disrupt healthcare and together left their jobs at Microsoft and jumped into the startup scene of Silicon Valley.

I believe there is tremendous value in developing mobile applications that passively collect crucial, context-specific patient data that is otherwise only recorded in clinical settings, so I was thrilled to have a chance to speak with Ryan and hear his vision for Pipette.

See my conversation with Ryan below:

BTE: What is the inspiration behind Pipette? What exactly is the technology you guys offer?

Ryan: The inspiration for Pipette comes from what is lacking in the healthcare system today. When a patient gets discharged from a hospital the care team has no idea of what is happening with that patient when they are at home, no clue if they are actually making progress toward recovery. What we wanted to do was build tools that would empower a patient during their recovery and enable care teams to see how a patient is recovering.

We entered the Rock Health program back in June with an idea and a small prototype of it and we were able to iterate on that idea and build a product over the last five months. The Rock Health partners helped us understand what the pain points were and how to approach the space. What we ultimately created is a platform to monitor a patient post-discharge that coaches a patient in the right direction and if things go wrong with the recovery we are able to notify the care team.

BTE: So these are apps you guys are developing?
Ryan: You can think of them as apps because they run on a patient’s phone, but our technology is special because it runs across all platforms including iOS, Android, laptops, desktops, SMS and we have spent a good amount of time making sure we can reach as many devices as possible. We learned pretty quickly that if you just build for one platform its not sufficient for healthcare. When you build a health solution, you need to reach the majority of the patient population.

BTE: So what are the next steps for you coming out of the Rock Health program? Do you plan to stay out in the Bay Area?
Ryan: The next step for us is kicking off these pilots. It’s an exciting time for us because we’ll be actively working with a few of the Rock Health partners to trial, iterate, and improve our product. Essentially, we get to act like a consumer startup in healthcare, which is incredibly rare. My co-founder and I will be staying in the Bay Area. We were living here before we started Pipette when we worked at Microsoft in Mountain View, so we will definitely be staying around here.

BTE: So do you guys just collect patient information about pain thresholds or do you collect other patient data as well?

Ryan: We try to collect all of the information necessary to make the patient’s next doctor visit more meaningful and we also try to take that information and use our technology to predict valuable things on the hospital side. For instance, we can tell the hospital which six patients need attention now, then we tell them the five who, if they have time, they should call and check up on because they are not going in the right direction. So there is a lot of information that goes into our technology, it’s not simply a data collection tool, there is an intelligence element to it.

BTE: You mentioned earlier that you had one idea in terms of who would pay for your product going into the Rock Health program and ended up learning you needed to take a different approach. What helped to help you learn that lesson?
Ryan: Going into it we thought doctors and hospitals would be our primary customer. We assumed they would jump at the opportunity to better communicate with their patients, I mean, why wouldn’t a hospital want to provide a higher level of care? During the first couple months of the program we had a chance to talk to mentors, as well as conduct a series of interviews and we started pitching it as a communication tool between doctors and patients and it wasn’t getting the doctors excited, it wasn’t getting the administrators excited. They were like, ‘well, we don’t want to introduce more forms of communication because there are other channels for it, why would we want to add this extra burden?’

Through that understanding we had to reassess what problem we were actually trying to solve. We determined it wasn’t really a communication problem but rather we were solving for this event that happens, or the complication that happens. We realized that the people who felt the impact of these complications the most was the payer group as well as the consumer, the patient themselves, since they are the ones who actually feel the pain and have to be readmitted to the hospital. So just being able to have a bouncing board and being able to iterate our pitch in these early days of the Rock Health program helped us create the offering we have today.

BTE: So that is a big part of the value proposition of the Rock Health program, giving you access to all of the people you need to talk to while you work through your business model?
Ryan: Right, and knowing we were wrong in the first week in the program was invaluable! Every decision we have made while developing our product was the result of feedback we received from those early conversations and interviews. We were really able to identify specifically what problems needed to be solved.

I would encourage future Rock Health companies to take a step back in the first month when they are here and really question what they are doing and the fundamentals behind it. When you enter a three month program, you are running full speed the whole time and don’t really get that extra time you need to question what you are doing. The fact that Rock Health has a five-month program allows you to get that time and really do that self-assessment.

Minnesota diagnostics company Ativa Medical is seeking $5 million, according to a recent regulatory filing.

The company has already raised $275,000.

The company is developing a device that will function as a mini-lab and comprises a rechargeable, portable analyzer and disposable test cards. The website claims that the system can produce lab quality results in less than five minutes. The system is able to perform 25 of the most common blood tests and run assays using central laboratory methodologies.

In July, CEO David Deetz said the company had 30 employees with 20 openings to be filled in the next two months. An email to Deetz was not immediately returned.

The company’s board of directors include James Stake, a former 3M healthcare executive; Tiffany Olson, previously president and CEO of Roche Diagnostics and Dale Wahlstrom, CEO of trade association LifeScience Alley and the BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota.

A company that’s developed a magnetic feeding tube for critically ill patients has raised $250,000.

Syncro Medical Innovations‘ fundraising was revealed in a regulatory document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The funding came in the form of debt from one investor. Syncro CEO Gary Wakeford didn’t return a call.

The company sells two versions of its Syncro-BlueTube small bowel feeding tube — one for adults and one for children. The BlueTube contains small magnets at its tip and can be guided into place inside a patient’s body by an external magnet.

The pediatric version of the tube received marketing clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August.

The device requires less than 20 minutes of insertion time and is successfully placed on the first attempt about 80 percent of the time, according to Syncro.

In June 2010, the company closed an $800,000 round of funding. Wakeford said at the time that Syncro would use the funding to boost its marketing and seek European regulatory approval of the BlueTube.

 

Congratulations to St. Louis Business Journal’s 40 under 40 class of 2012. This year’s group of talented individuals showcases St. Louis’ all-stars in the workplace, in the community and at home. The winners come from all corners of the region, occupying diverse positions and serving multiple charitable causes. Click on the photos to the right to view this year’s winners, along with their favorite sport memorabilia. For more information about each winner, pick up the Jan. 26 edition of the St...

Internal Medicine News, an independent bimonthly newspaper founded in 1968 that is also available online, has finally arrived to the iPhone and iPod Touch in app format.

Owned by Elsevier’s International Medical News Group division, the Internal Medicine News App seeks to bring this leading source of healthcare policy and research development news that affects patient care to mobile devices.

Led by an impressive editorial staff and an illustrious editorial advisory board, Internal Medicine News strives to provide coverage of medical insights and developments that is “fair, balanced, and accurate.”

Read below to see how the Internal Medicine News App stacks up.

The Internal Medicine News App opens with a no-frills home screen, with options for News, Specialty Focus, Blogs, Videos, and Facebook along the bottom index bar.

The Top Stories section, constantly and automatically updated, reflects the top stories on the Internal Medicine News website, culled from all specialties. Each story features a concise overview of the particular development, well-written and inclusive of direct quotes, as expected from Internal Medicine News. Here is an example of a healthcare policy story from the Top Stories section.

The Specialty Focus option presents news divided into subject areas, such as cardiology, dermatology, geriatrics, infectious diseases, etc. Here, for example, we look at the Gastroenterology section, which features developments in GERD, IBD, and Hepatitis, among others.

This story from the Gastroenterology section summarizes the findings of a recent study published in Gut that explored how geography affects the incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in women. These stories not only concisely highlight the findings of interest from the research studies, but also provide the study citation information for further reading.

Moreover, stories can be quickly shared via facebook or email.

The Blogs section features some of Internal Medicine News’s most popular views and commentary. Here is one example, Going Viral: Notes on Residency, a blog written by an internal medicine resident at the Cleveland Clinic.

The Videos section features items from Internal Medicine News’ Youtube video library. These videos play inside the app via YouTube with the usual YouTube play controls, and can be viewed horizontally or vertically.

Finally, Internal Medicine News has hit social media, particularly via Facebook and Twitter.

Pricing:

• The Internal Medicine News App is free at the iTunes store.

Likes:

• Simple, straightforward user interface
• Backed by the prestige and expected top-flight quality reporting of Internal Medicine News
• Free!

Concerns:

• Each story can take several seconds to load, depending on the connection
• The app does not yet have a “Most Popular” listing of stories like the IMN website
• No iPad customized app yet!

Conclusion:

• The Internal Medicine News App from IMNG Medical Media is a free and outstanding, reputable resource for internal medicine news regarding research advances and healthcare policy that should be a must-have for internal medicine practitioners and trainees. Watch for the Internal Medicine News App to make our next edition of Top Apps for Internal Medicine Physicians.

iTunes Link

A biotechnology company that develops tests to determine dosages for more personalized cancer treatments has begun looking for a new CEO after the current head of the company submitted his resignation for family reasons. He will be replaced by a senior vice-president from Life Sciences Greenhouse of Central Pennsylvania, an incubator and investor in the biotechnology startup.

Edward Erickson’s resignation from Saladax Biomedical in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania will be effective February 12, though he will continue to serve as a board member, according to a press statement.

Kevin Harter, the co-founder of the Life Sciences Greenhouse, will serve as interim CEO until a replacement can be found.

The greenhouse serves as a public-private partnership where Harter manages a portfolio of early-stage biotech, medical device, and diagnostic companies. Harter served as an executive chairman of Saladax from 2007-2011.

Saladax develops and commercializes novel diagnostic tests for more personalized cancer treatment as well as for new and existing therapeutics. Its dose management technology enables physicians to optimize drug dosing to meet individual patient needs, leading to improved response and quality of life, according to its website.

The transition comes at a significant period in the company’s development. Saladax Biomedical is in the midst of finalizing development of its next two oncology drug assays for paclitaxel and docetaxel. It expects to have a CE mark for them no later than the second quarter of 2012, Erickson said in an e-mailed response to questions. He added the company has not decided additional assays to complete at this time.

Last year it closed a $9 million debt facility with GE Capital.

Erickson has several years’ experience as a biotech CEO. He took diagnostics companies Immunicon and Cholestech public, along with DepoTech, a drug delivery company, public as CEO.