The trial showed that after 18 months of treatment, patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease taking Baxter's immunoglobulin treatment did not show a statistically significant difference in the rate of cognitive decline compared to a placebo.

The results also did not indicate a statistically significant change in patients' functional ability, Baxter said.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore)

CHICAGO - Anne Lipira had been thriving as a nurse at a west suburban hospital when she decided to go back to school in 2011 to get a higher degree in the field.

She felt her decade of experience and associate degree might not hold up in the shaky economy. She also wanted to develop more skills in case a promotion or leadership opportunity came her way.

"If something happens to your job, you could always go anywhere with your bachelor's in nursing," said Lipira, 54, who graduates from Benedictine University in Lisle this month. "I definitely think it offers you security."

During the past five years, more Illinois nurses with two-year degrees have enrolled in accelerated nursing programs in pursuit of a bachelor's, a trend that is unfolding nationally too.

The latest data show that 41 percent of registered nurses in Illinois have associate degrees, slightly more than the 39 percent who hold a bachelor's. But that makeup is quickly changing, experts say.

Last year 3,367 nurses in Illinois enrolled in a baccalaureate nursing program, a 75 percent jump from the 1,922 who signed up in 2008, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. The number has risen by 88 percent across the country in the last five years, figures show.

Hospitals are pushing their nursing staffs to go back to school for higher degrees as they chase a prestigious designation that focuses on quality nursing care.

"We need a nursing workforce that is as highly educated as possible," said Jane Kirschling, president of the Washington-based nursing college association. "The care that's delivered across America ... it has (become) extremely complex."

Students who graduate with an associate or bachelor's degree can become registered nurses, but their preparation for the job is completely different, nursing leaders say.

The two-year nursing programs at community colleges mostly focus on preparing students for the licensure exam. In a bachelor's nursing program, however, students also take classes on communication, research and leadership.

Those kinds of classes help nurses build their thinking skills and work with all kinds of people, according to nursing experts.

"The nurse of today is dealing with much more independence, critical thinking and complex patients," said Terri Burch, president of St. Anthony College of Nursing in Rockford. Obtaining a higher degree "is something (nurses) need to go back and do so they're not frustrated later."

But leaders have come across all kinds of barriers - jobs, families and other responsibilities - as they've tried to recruit nurses to go back to school.

To make the transition smoother, community colleges and universities have teamed up in recent years or expanded age-old partnerships. Many of the programs make it easier to transfer college credits and hold classes outside of universities, such as in rural areas, inside hospitals and at community colleges.

Claywon Young thought it would be too time-consuming to get a bachelor's degree in nursing as she juggled work and raised her two children. But the 42-year-old City Colleges of Chicago graduate has been able to take classes before and after work near her home on the city's West Side. The accelerated nursing program is a partnership between her alma mater and Northern Illinois University.

"I was just amazed," said Young, a nurse at West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, of the flexibility. "I jumped right in."

With health insurance expanding to cover an estimated 30 million more Americans under the Affordable Care Act, nurses need to be ready to handle all kinds of illnesses and patients, experts said.

A 2010 report from the Institute of Medicine encouraged the health care profession to increase the number of nurses with bachelor's degrees to 80 percent from 50 percent by 2020, pointing to the changing health care landscape.

Hospitals appear to be heeding the call by requiring nurses to hold a bachelor's degree. Last year, 39 percent of hospitals across the country required new hires to have a bachelor's, up 9 percentage points from the year before, according to the nursing college association.

One reason is the Magnet Recognition Program, a prestigious designation for hospitals that recognizes quality nursing. One of the chief requirements is that nurse managers and leaders have at least a baccalaureate in nursing.

In Illinois, 33 hospitals have received the designation, more than any other state in the country.

Some studies have found that hospitals have better patient outcomes, such as fewer deaths, when their nurses have a bachelor's degree. Other research has uncovered no causal relationship between nurse education and patient outcome.

Despite the shift toward higher academic degrees, nursing leaders say they don't think the associate programs will become obsolete. Although the nursing shortage has been curtailed, experts predict a wave of nurses will retire as the economy improves within the next three to five years.

"We're going to (need to) produce as many new nurses as possible," said Susan Swart, executive director of ANA-Illinois, an organization for registered nurses. "Without the community colleges, we just can't achieve that."

In some places like New York, legislation could be crafted to force nurses to get their bachelor's degrees, a measure that nursing leaders in Illinois are trying to avoid since the state's nursing community doesn't fully endorse the idea.

Instead of mandating further education, nursing leaders said they want to look more thoroughly at the nursing partnerships in the state to see which schools have better graduation rates, Swart said.

By this fall, nursing leaders hope to release a report that will show where partnerships have succeeded and how that can be mimicked elsewhere, Swart added.

While taking classes for her associate degree in nursing at Truman College a few years ago, Katherine Lluen-Nunez kept hearing that nurses with a bachelor's degree were more likely to be hired. They also had more opportunities to climb the career ladder, her instructors told her.

Now taking classes for the higher degree at Benedictine University, Lluen-Nunez, 40, is learning about policy, nursing issues and the problems the nation faces with the health care system, topics not covered in the two-year program, she says.

"Having the bachelor's is a very important thing," said the Mount Prospect resident. "It just opens the door to many more options."

jmdelgado@tribune.com

Twitter @jendelgado1 ___

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The National Institutes of Health has halted a study testing an experimental HIV vaccine after an independent review board found the vaccine did not prevent HIV infection nor reduce the amount of HIV in the blood.

The trial, which was started in 2009, is the latest in a series of failed trials. The study, called HVTN 505, had enrolled 2,504 volunteers in 19 U.S. cities. It was looking at men who have sex with men and transgender people who have sex with men.

The review board has recommended that no further vaccinations be given. The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which sponsored the study, said it would continue to follow study participants to further evaluate the trial data.

So far, there are no vaccines approved to prevent infection with the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

CHICAGO - The impending Supreme Court ruling on gene patents is creating uncertainty in the fledging genetic diagnostics sector.

At this week’s Biotechnology Industry Organization show in Chicago, a panel of law experts bemoaned the recent Supreme Court hearings on whether individual genes can be patented, saying there was no sign that anyone involved in the case truly understood the technology or the business implications of their arguments. That’s disturbing, because the decision could have important effects on industries including the developing field of molecular diagnostics.

BIO attendees, mostly executives in a variety of biotech fields, crowded into meeting rooms to stand through overfilled sessions on the promises and challenges of personalized medicine and diagnostics. In some cases, these tests can help doctors diagnose disease or predict whether a particular drug will work in a patient or cause unwanted side effects. Other tests can determine how quickly a patient metabolizes drugs, information that can help doctors decide how big a dose to prescribe. At the convention, panelists described the many challenges facing companies that develop these tests. Among others, they are still working out how much to charge for diagnostics and how to partner with drug companies, and the industry is still not governed by clear regulatory rules. In this context, the turmoil over gene and biomarker patents is disconcerting.

Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, the case in which the Supreme Court heard arguments last week, turns on the question of whether an isolated human gene is patentable. Myriad, a company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, currently has exclusive rights to perform diagnostic tests that screen two genes for variants linked to breast and ovarian cancer. A decision is expected this summer.

One expert at BIO’s session on the patent case said she was surprised by how poorly the lawyers arguing the case seemed to understand the biotechnology involved. Another was concerned that the arguments failed to consider the consequences the decision could have for issues such as genetic sequences that might be used for vaccine development.

Last summer, the Supreme Court overturned a patent claim on a process for monitoring levels of a metabolite in a patient’s blood to determine the correct dosage of certain drugs. Some say that this earlier case is likely to affect their industry more than the Myriad case will.

But the Myriad decision will also have a big impact, says Jim Chinitz, cofounder and CEO of Population Diagnostics, a genomics company based in Melville, New York, that is developing a test to diagnose a broad spectrum of autism types before symptoms are seen in kids. “Just having these questions hovering over this industry is problematic,” says Chinitz. “Since we are finding novel biomarkers that nobody has ever associated with the diseases that we study, we think we are generally safe,” he says of Population Diagnostics. “But even though the details of the case probably won’t materially harm us, the gray cloud over the industry is preventing investors from taking action.”

Nicholas Conti, vice president of business development at Quest Diagnostics, says that as the largest service testing lab, his company could benefit if the court’s decision costs other companies their exclusive rights to diagnostic tests—that would make more tests available for Quest to run. But the risk, he says, will be the loss of innovative tests for Quest to acquire, because small companies and academics will have trouble getting the funding they need to develop new ideas. “If the patent field opens up, I don’t know what we’d do in terms of new tests,” he says. “The danger is that there will be no new tests to take on.”

Others, however, see gene patents themselves as hindering new test development. One such observer is Lana Feng, who worked for years in business development at the diagnostics company Genoptix (now owned by Novartis). The state of the art in disease diagnostics is to screen patients for many different genetic variants at once, says Feng, who recently started a new company called Personal Diagnostics to broker deals between Chinese and American diagnostics and drug developers. For example, if a patient comes in with lung cancer, an oncologist could use this approach to quickly determine which of the many subtypes that patient has. “The problem we ran into very immediately is that you need a panel of genes, but a lot of these genes are patented individually—so you have to go to many different companies to clear each one, and it becomes cost prohibitive,” says Feng. “For us, that was a huge hurdle for innovation.”

(Reuters) CHICAGO - Health insurer Humana Inc said on Thursday that it has begun an internal review of the events around an announcement on April 1 of a government policy change related to private Medicare.

News of the government's change in how it would reimburse insurers leaked into the market that day ahead of the announcement and Humana's shares rose sharply.

Humana spokesman Ton Noland confirmed that the company has started the probe and fired the law firm of the lobbyist who was working for Humana and who had been named by the Wall Street Journal as having been involved in the leak.

Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa said after the Journal report that he had began looking into the circumstances of the announcement and that he believed the policy decision may have been leaked.

On April 1, the government was due to announce after the stock market closed details of how much it would pay insurers who provide private Medicare plans for the elderly, called Medicare Advantage. But about 20 minutes before the market closed, the investment research firm Height Securities sent out an alert saying that the government had decided to go with a more favorable payment plan, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The government then announced after the market closed that it would raise the reimbursement rate instead of cutting it by 2.3 percent, as it had initially proposed in February.

Insurers are reimbursed for Medicare Advantage, private insurance for seniors and the disabled by the government. This type of insurance accounts for about two-thirds of Humana's annual revenues. Insurers had lobbied loudly against the proposed cut, saying it would cost the industry $11 billion.

The Journal reported that a lobbyist who worked for both law firm Greenberg Traurig and Humana had been involved in the leak. Greenberg Traurig and Height Securities were not immediately available for comment.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which set the policy, said on April 9 that it was investigating the events around the decision. Shares of Humana, UnitedHealth Group Inc and Aetna Inc all soared on the news.

Humana did not have advance knowledge of the CMS decision on the rates, Noland said. News of the internal investigation was first reported in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Sharon Begley, reporting by Caroline Humer; Editing by Bernard Orr)

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Only seven new drugs are in development for the treatment of infections caused by an especially nasty class of superbugs that include E. coli and CRE, the so-called "nightmare bacteria" that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised alarms about last month.

The data come from the latest report by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, or IDSA, released on Thursday, which has been tracking the rising number of bacteria that resist even the most potent antibiotics.

"We're on the precipice of returning to the dark days before antibiotics enabled safer surgery, chemotherapy and the care of premature infants," said Dr. Helen Boucher, an infectious diseases expert at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and a member of IDSA's board, whose report was published online in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

"Simply put, the antibiotic pipeline is on life support and novel solutions are required to resuscitate it - now," IDSA President Dr. David Relman said in a statement.

Boucher said health officials are losing ground because companies are not developing drugs quickly enough to keep up with the superbugs' ability to develop resistance, adding: "We're all at risk."

Almost as soon as penicillin was introduced in the 1940s, bacteria began to develop resistance to its effects, prompting researchers to develop many new generations of antibiotics. But their overuse and misuse have helped fuel the rise of drug-resistant superbugs.

In the past month, public health officials in the United States and Britain have sounded alarms about the growing threat.

On March 5 the CDC warned of the spread of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a class of what CDC Director Thomas Frieden called "nightmare bacteria" that kill up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from them.

A week later, Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said antibiotic resistance was a "catastrophic threat" and called for global action to fill a drug "discovery void.

'ALARMINGLY LOW'

The latest report, a follow-up to a 2009 study, is based on interviews with drug companies, published data, information culled from websites and other sources. It focuses on new agents to fight gram-negative superbugs, which the group said represent the most "pressing clinical needs."

Gram-negative bacteria include E. coli, Salmonella, Shigella and other species in the class known as Enterobacteriaceae bacteria.

It suggests that companies have continued their retreat from research and development of antibiotics.

"The number of antibacterial compounds in phase 2 or 3 development remains alarmingly low," Boucher and colleagues wrote.

Unlike drugs for chronic diseases such as diabetes, which are taken over many years, antibiotics are used for just a few weeks, and efforts to control resistance have led doctors to prescribe the drugs sparingly.

For the report, Boucher and colleagues focused on new oral or intravenous antibiotics that had progressed to phase 2 or phase 3 clinical trials.

They found a total of seven drugs in development and being tested in people with drug-resistant, gram-negative infections.

"We know not all of those drugs will make it," Boucher said in a telephone interview.

Of the seven, one company, Polymedix, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this month, and AstraZeneca, which is making two of the drugs, last month said it would invest less money in developing antibiotics.

The other companies include Merck, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline and privately held Achaogen Inc of South San Francisco, California.

The ISDA is pushing for new economic incentives for drug companies, a clarification of U.S. regulations for antibiotic approval, more funding for basic research, better infection-prevention efforts and better data on the spread of drug resistance and the use of antibiotics.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; editing by Xavier Briand)

Personally, my capacity for patience is quite low when it comes to waiting on my smartphone or tablet to charge. I doubt I’m the only one either.

Thankfully, the next generation of devices will fix that issue thanks to a new lithium-ion micro-battery developed by researchers at University of Illinois. By changing the structure, the new batteries will not only be smaller, but they’ll also charge 1,000 times faster than what’s currently used in most devices.

“This is a whole new way to think about batteries,” said university professor of mechanical science and engineering William P. King in a statement. “A battery can deliver far more power than anybody ever thought. In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small. And the battery has lagged far behind. This is a microtechnology that could change all of that.”

Basically, that means device makers will no longer have to chose between making something powerful or something that can run for a long time without needing a new charge. As for smartphones, King said the new batteries will enable us to start making devices that are about 30 times smaller and radio signal range that’s 30 times longer.

But it still could be a while before you start to see this new battery tech pop up in devices you can actually buy. The research team is currently working on integrating the new batteries with electronic components and figuring our how to keep costs low for manufacturers — something that might be just as important as the discover itself.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

CHICAGO - Abbott Laboratories, in its first quarterly earnings report without its proprietary pharmaceutical arm, said first-quarter net income from its continuing operations rose 55 percent to $544 million, or 34 cents a share, up from $351 million, or 22 cents a share in the same period a year ago.

Overall profit fell 56 percent from $1.24 billion a year ago, reflecting Abbott's spinoff of its proprietary pharmaceutical business into a separate company called AbbVie Inc.

The Lake County-based health care products company said revenue rose 1.8 percent to $5.38 billion, fueled by increases in its nutrition and diagnostics divisions and strength in emerging markets. Excluding the negative impact of foreign exchange rates, sales rose 3.5 percent.

Sales in its nutrition unit, which includes brands like Similac baby formula and Ensure adult products, rose 9 percent. Diagnostics sales increased 6.4 percent.

Excluding certain items, net income rose to $674 million, or 42 cents a share, up 4.6 percent from $645 million, or 40 cents a share, in the first quarter of 2012. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings per share of 41 cents.

Sales in emerging markets, a key focus for the "new" Abbott, jumped 15.2 percent, and now comprise more than 40 percent of the company's total sales.

Abbott on Jan. 1 spun off its proprietary pharmaceutical business, including its blockbuster drug Humira, into a separate company called AbbVie Inc., which will report its first quarter results next Friday.

Shares of Abbott closed Tuesday at $36.40, up 0.75 percent. It stock was trading down 2.47 percent at $35.50 in light pre-market trading. Since splitting with AbbVie at the turn of the year, shares are up 13.6 percent.

pfrost@tribune.com

The jury awarded no damages to plaintiff Carol Strum, the company said. Strum, a nurse who claimed her ASR hip was defective, received the implant in 2008 and had it removed in 2011.

J&J voluntarily recalled the ASR hip from the market in August 2010. The company said about 10,750 plaintiffs have direct claims in pending lawsuits over the product. Strum's case was the second to go to trial.

"DePuy's actions concerning the product were appropriate and responsible, including the program to address patients' medical costs related to the recall," said Lorie Gawreluk, a spokeswoman for DePuy.

CHICAGO - It’s not just sore throats and flu shots anymore. Walgreens today became the first retail store chain to expand its health care services to include diagnosing and treating patients for chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes and high cholesterol.

The move is the retail industry’s boldest push yet into an area long controlled by physicians, and comes amid continuing concerns about health care costs and a potential shortage of primary care doctors.

“Those two words, diagnosis and treatment, are big words. They show [Walgreens] is coming out of the closet and saying we really are going to do primary care now,” said Tom Charland, chief executive officer of Merchant Medicine, a health care consulting firm.

Other retail store clinics, such as those at Walmart, CVS and Target stores, help customers manage chronic illnesses but generally do so only after they have been diagnosed elsewhere. More than a year ago, Walmart outlined plans to provide primary care in a leaked confidential document – but then appeared to back away from the idea.

Walgreens officials say they will have nurse practitioners and physician assistants at more than 300 Take Care Clinics in 18 states and the District of Columbia to do tests and make diagnoses – and also write prescriptions, refer patients for additional tests and help them manage their conditions.

“We’re not trying to take over primary care, but we think we can help support physicians and transform the way care is delivered to provide more access points at a time when people need it the most,” said Heather Helle, a division vice president at Walgreens.

But that offer was not welcomed by the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, who said it is more difficult to manage patients’ care if they are treated in various settings -- and that the clinics may not have some specialty services needed to treat those with complex diseases.

“It ends up being riskier for patients and costlier for the country,” said AAFP President Jeffrey Cain, a family doctor in Denver.

Helle said that in a perfect world all patients would have their own primary care doctors, “but, in reality, they simply do not.”

She said physicians will help oversee Walgreens’ clinics – and the clinics can transmit test results and other information electronically to doctors’ offices. She noted that clinics could help people find doctors too.  Many would have an affiliation or other link with the stores’ clinics.

Retail clinics generally appeal to consumers looking for convenience and cost savings.  Costs are roughly 30 percent to 40 percent less than similar care at doctor’s offices and 80 percent cheaper than at an emergency room, according to a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Managed Care.

At Walgreens, services will range from about $65 to $122 and will be offered in all Take Care Clinics except in Missouri, where state laws restrict services provided by non-physicians, the company said.

Walgreens’ move puts it in the potentially lucrative business of treating customers with long-term medical problems, which often require prescription drugs or other supplies that could be purchased at its stores.

Expanding services to diagnosis and treatment of chronic conditions that affect millions of Americans is a logical step, because the clinics can not only grow their own business, but also partner with hospitals and doctors’ groups to gain new customers, said Ronald L. Hammerle, president of Health Resources, a Florida consulting firm.

 “Everyone is trying to figure out how to get into that space,” he said. “The sophisticated player recognizes that whoever controls point of entry [to health services] manages the downstream referral business.”

In addition to its in-store clinics, Walgreens runs about 350 health clinics at worksites, which are paid for by employers. The retailer also has a program to link patients leaving hospitals with Take Care Clinics and Walgreens pharmacies.

At least one physicians’ group that had been briefed on the expanded clinics took a more conciliatory stance to the retailer’s announcement.

“We understand retail clinics are here to stay and likely to be expanding,” said Steven Weinberger, executive vice president of the American College of Physicians. “We need to figure out how the patient can be best served … in terms of safety, access and communication with the primary care physicians.”

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A study in rats and monkeys suggests an experimental Merck & Co sleep drug may help induce sleep without causing the memory loss and attention problems sometimes seen in the commonly used drugs Ambien and Lunesta, company researchers said on Wednesday.

Experiments in animals suggest Merck's sleep drug Suvorexant, now before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, may avoid these side effects, the company said.

Insomnia affects about 10 percent of U.S. adults, and roughly a third of these individuals take drugs to help them sleep. Most sleep aids, including Sanofi's Ambien or Sunovion Pharmaceuticals' Lunesta, act on a key neurotransmitter in the brain called GABA.

"These treatments work by forcing the brain to go to sleep," said study leader Jason Uslaner of Merck in an interview on the website of Science Translational Medicine, which published the study.

GABA receptors are important to many brain regions, including those important for cognition, which is likely why common sleep aids can cause memory loss and attention problems.

"When you hit those, you don't just hit the sleep system," John Renger, executive director and head of neruoscience basic research at Merck and one of the study's authors, said in a telephone interview.

Suvorexant is part of a class of drugs called Dual Orexin Receptor Antagonists or DORAs, which work by blocking chemical messengers called orexins. Orexins are responsible for keeping people awake. Levels of this compound rise during the day and fall at night.

Orexins originate in a specific region of the hypothalamus, so targeting them may have less impact on other brain functions, Renger said.

For this study, the team wanted to find out what would happen if someone is awakened on this drug and has a very high level of it in their system.

"How impaired would they be?" Renger said.

To test this, the researchers did a series of experiments on rhesus monkeys and rats. First, the team trained monkeys to perform a common attention test in which they needed to respond quickly to a blinking light on a screen and remember what they touched. Monkeys given GABA inhibitors were much slower in responding to the prompt, and in some cases, missed it altogether, while monkeys given a potent orexin blocker called DORA-22 did not show these attention issues, Renger said.

The team also saw differences in a simple memory test in rats. Rats were first exposed to a colored object, and then later exposed to it again. Typically, rats that recall an object show less interest in it when they are shown it again.

In the study, rats given GABA blockers were less likely to recall the objects than those given DORA-22.

Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford University, who wrote a commentary on the study in the same journal, said the findings show promise.

"Are DORAs the perfect hypnotics? Only long-term use in large numbers of insomnia patients will reveal whether these drugs will be preferred to GABAergic hypnotics, and whether they produce rare complications, including narcolepsy-like symptoms in predisposed individuals," Mignot wrote.

So far, Merck has not seen any cases of narcolepsy, a sleep disorder marked by daytime sleepiness, in its late-stage clinical trials, Renger said.

The most common side effects from Suvorexant have been headache and sleepiness. No serious drug-related side effects have been reported.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Vicki Allen)

(Reuters) CHICAGO - A slim majority of advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted on Wednesday for approval of Abbott Laboratories' implantable heart device MitraClip, saying it had more benefits than risks.

The eight members of the advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend the device's safety. However, in a tie-breaker vote it voted 5-4 against the question of whether there was a reasonable assurance MitraClip would be effective for its intended use.

Overall, the members voted 5-3 to agree that the device's benefits outweighed its risks.

The recommendation comes as a surprise after FDA staff reviewers made negative comments about MitraClip on Monday, seeking more data to show the device's safety and effectiveness.

The FDA usually takes its advisers' votes into consideration when it decides on whether to approve a device for sale. In a statement, Abbott said it expects the FDA's final decision later this year.

"We look forward to continuing discussions with the agency regarding the panel's comments," Charles Simonton, chief medical officer at Abbott Vascular, said in a statement.

MitraClip, which is currently selling in 30 countries, treats mitral regurgitation, a condition in which the mitral valve of the heart does not close properly, causing blood leakage that can lead to stroke, heart attack or even death.

MitraClip works by clipping the leaflets of the leaky mitral valve and is designed for use only in those patients with the condition who are considered high-risk for open-heart surgery.

Abbott estimates the disorder affects about one in 10 people aged 75 and older.

The Abbott Park, Illinois company's shares closed at $33.81 on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Bangalore; Editing by Paul Tait)

CHICAGO - Richard Gonzalez' final year at Abbott Laboratories was a lucrative one.

The CEO of AbbVie Inc., the North Chicago-based pharmaceutical company spun off from Abbott on Jan. 1, received a 43 percent hike in total compensation in 2012, according to a proxy statement filed late Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Gonzalez, 59, had total compensation of $7.9 million, up from $5.6 million in 2011. He received a salary of $863,942, stock awards valued at $3.3 million and a bonus of $2.5 million, based in part on surpassing financial goals set for Abbott's pharmaceutical business and a host of other measures including helping orchestrate AbbVie's split from Abbott, according to the proxy.

Other top AbbVie executives also received sizable pay bumps in 2012, including Laura Schumacher, the company's general counsel and executive vice president of business development and external affairs. Her total compensation shot up 83 percent to $10.2 million in 2012, an amount that included a $1.1 million bonus for her role in the Jan. 1 separation. She had salary of $831,682, stock awards valued at $4.5 million and a performance-based bonus of $1.3 million, awarded based in part on successfully resolving litigation and for the company meeting certain financial targets.

William Chase, former Abbott vice president of licensing and acquisitions and current AbbVie chief financial officer, had 2012 total compensation of $4.2 million, up from $1.8 million in 2011.

Carlos Alban, former Abbott senior vice president of proprietary pharmaceutical products and current Abbvie executive vice president of commercial operations, had 2012 total compensation of $6.5 million, up from $3.9 million in 2011.

John Leonard, who heads pharmaceutical research and development, had 2012 total compensation of $5.5 million, up from $3.5 million in 2011.

At Abbott, CEO Miles White continued to add to his pay, ranked as one of the highest in Chicagoland.

White's total compensation rose to $25.1 million in 2012, up from $24 million a year earlier. He had a total salary of $1.9 million, stock awards of $9.4 million and a bonus of $4.7 million. He also received $2.1 million in option awards and logged a $6.2 million rise in deferred compensation.

Abbott CFO Thomas Freyman's total pay climbed to $9.7 million, up from $7.9 million in 2011.

Photo credit: freedigitalphotos user Salvatore Vuono

pfrost@tribune.com -- Twitter: @peterfrost ___

(Reuters) CHICAGO - Staff reviewers for the Food and Drug Administration did not recommend approval of Abbott Laboratories' implantable heart device MitraClip, citing a lack of "valid scientific evidence" of safety and effectiveness.

In briefing documents posted on the regulator's website on Monday, the FDA reviewers said the device's approval would not be appropriate at the time as major questions of safety, efficacy and overall benefit-risk profile for the device remained unanswered.

MitraClip Clip Delivery System (CDS) is a percutaneously implanted mechanical clip for the reduction of mitral valve insufficiency - a heart disorder in which the mitral valve does not close properly when the heart pumps out blood, allowing blood to flow backward into the heart.

Abbott is seeking approval of MitraClip to reduce mitral valve insufficiency in patients who have been determined by a cardiac surgeon to be too high risk for open mitral valve surgery.

The proposed use for the device was changed by Abbott after the FDA had expressed concerns that there was a lack of evidence to support the device's approval for use in patients with significant mitral valve insufficiency, the reviewers said in the documents.

However, the reviewers recommended that MitraClip CDS continue to remain available to the high-risk patient population as an investigational device so that Abbott can conduct its trials in an optimal manner. (http://link.reuters.com/kyf76t)

Shares of the company were down 1 percent at $33.81 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

While many large employers are going the route of on-site health clinics to save on health costs and encourage employees to become more engaged in their health, there are options for companies that can’t commit to a full, on-site clinic. One of those options is providing on-site preventive exams to their employees, and one company facilitating that, Pathfinder Health, is apparently looking to grow as it’s well on its way to completing a  $1.5 million equity offering, according to a recent regulatory filing.

The Illinois-based preventive health provider works with companies to bring doctors who perform physical exams, complete with lab workups, to employees with the goal of improving the identification, prevention and treatment to employees at risk for complications of chronic disease.

Under the preventive health section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, health plans are required to cover the cost of certain preventive health services without requiring a co-pay. And, although some have contested the cost-savings potential of preventive health efforts, that hasn’t stopped the creation of a variety of new self-tracking tools, employee wellness programs and federal initiatives driving a widespread push for preventive health.

Aside from physicals, the company also works with employers to provide personal prevention plans, medically monitored weight loss programs and risk-reduction coaching, according to its website. A company representative did not reply to a request for more information.

The HIMSS13 conference is Avia’s coming-out party. The Chicago-based accelerator will serve as a matchmaker: It works with hospitals to learn their priorities and then goes out to find early stage companies that the health systems can work with. Avia won’t always provide capital, but instead offer early stage companies access to key customers (the hospitals) who wouldn’t otherwise have the bandwidth to connect them. They also plan on running events that serve its hospital patrons.

Their premise is most hospitals don’t have the bandwidth to engage these early stage companies — but they do have the desire. They’ll act almost like a business development group working on behalf of a provider, according to co-founder Ted Meisel and chief operating officer Eric Jensen.

Because they work on behalf of hospitals, what they’re looking for will change as they add partners. But, generally, the Avia team is scouting startups focused on patient engagement, analytics, clinical-decision support and telemedicine. Their ideal companies will be post-Rock Health/Blueprint/Healthbox/Startup Health companies that have a product and have built a little traction, Meisel and Jensen said.

Avia’s CEO is Eric Langshur, co-founder of Abundant Venture Partners, who founded the healthcare social network CarePages, the digital health company Rise Health, among other things. Their advisory board includes the CEO of HIMSS and an executive from  Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

HIMSS and Avia announced the partnership at the Health IT Angel Fair on Tuesday. Both sides said the final details of how HIMSS will work with Avia are still being developed, as are final decisions about what deals will look like with startup companies. Meisel said their first health system partners should be announced this summer.

The Series A, led by iNetworks LLC, will support multicenter clinical trials of Novian’s device in the U.S., Britain and France. Enrollment has already begun in the U.S. and will start shortly in Europe.

Novilase Interstitial Laser Therapy is an image-guided procedure that uses two needles inserted into the breast to deliver controlled heat that ablates breast tumors. It’s an outpatient procedure that’s intended to be used as an alternative option to a traditional lumpectomy.

Already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in treating benign tumors, Novian’s device is now being tried to evaluate the rate of complete tumor ablation of breast cancers smaller than 2 cm in size. The company says the therapy may provide women with malignant tumors with an ablation option that would result in a lower rate of residual disease, fewer treatments, shorter recovery and less scarring.

An estimated 211,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the U.S. Current treatment options may include neoadjuvant chemotherapy, mastectomy and lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy, but about 250 companies are working on new treatment, according to an analysis from Decision Resources.

According to clinicaltrial.gov, Novian should wrap up the 12-month study in April. In the meantime, it’s also looking to close another $2.5 million tranche of the Series A.

The device company is based in Chicago and has a subsidiary in Evry, France.

[Screen cap from Novian Health website]

Boston might be the top hub for life sciences in the U.S., but there are lots of cities hot on its tail.

In addition to ranking the top 10 clusters for life sciences in 2012, an annual report from Jones Lang LaSalle’s highlighted some fast-growing cities for life sciences innovation. Two of the top five emerging cities, Westchester/New Haven and Salt Lake City, weren’t even on the same list last year.

Here’s a closer look at the initiatives, startups and innovation climates in the top five up-and-coming healthcare hubs.

Westchester/New Haven

The corridor between Boston and New Jersey is becoming a hub of its own thanks to new incubator developments and state and local efforts to encourage life sciences research and investment. The report also calls attention to the presence of a well-educated workforce and strong higher educational institutions and research hospitals in this area.

Aside from bigger pharmaceutical companies like Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ACOR), Achillon Pharmaceuticals and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, the area is home to some promising smaller companies. QUICK LLC, for one, is developing a saliva-based mobile diagnostic tool. Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, co-founded by a Nobel Prize-winning Yale professor, is in phase 3 testing of its monotherapy for bacterial infections based on an understanding of the 3-D properties of antibiotics.

Chicago

As the home to Abbott Laboratories, Baxter and Walgreens — and startup resources liked the Healthbox accelerator and Chicago Innovation Mentors — Chicago has also become a space for spinoffs and startups, especially in health IT. A few on our radar are Blue Cross Blue Shield spinoff Blue Health Intelligence, which provides healthcare data analysis, and Pervasive Health, a data analysis company founded by entrepreneurs in the mobile industry.

Denver

Ten higher education institutions in the Denver area have life sciences research programs, according to the report, and Colorado has five venture firms with partial or full focus on funding local life sciences companies. It also has Spectrum Pharmaceuticals and the Fitzsimons Life Science District.

Nearby Aurora is the headquarters of a company taking an innovative approach to fighting hospital infections, Sharklet Technologies. Meanwhile, University of Colorado spinoff Mosaic Biosciences, which is developing synthetic materials for wound healing, is located in Boulder.

Cleveland/Columbus/Cincinnati

Statewide initiatives like the Third Frontier Project and a collaboration between Case Western Reserve University, University of Cincinnati and Ohio State University to streamline the IRB approval process have made Ohio an affordable and supportive environment for launching a life sciences company.

MedCity News is based in Cleveland, so we’re especially fond of local startups like Zuga Medical, which is commercializing a way to simplify dental implants, and 7signal, which helps hospitals monitor their wireless connectivity. But other areas in the state are producing great companies too. Cincinnati’s Aerpio Therapeutics raised a $27 million series A last year for its diabetic macular edema drug, and Columbus’ HealthSpot launched its telehealth kiosk at CES this year.

Salt Lake City

Here’s one we don’t hear about too often. That’s probably because the Salt Lake City area receives a relatively low amount of venture capital and National Institutes of Health funding. It’s home to only 500 life sciences-related companies, but that accounts for a pretty sizable percentage of the total workforce, and public and private groups are trying to build it up as a research hub.

Startups on our radar include Catheter Connections, a startup that’s created an infection-control cap for IV luers, and Juneau Biosciences, which is developing a DNA-based test for identifying women at risk for endometriosis.

[Chicago photo from Wikimedia Commons]

Midwest healthcare startups cumulatively pulled in $996 million last year, a 23 percent increase from the amount of money that venture capitalists invested in 2011.

That’s according to the Midwest Healthcare Venture Investment Report from BioEnterprise, a biomedical accelerator based in Cleveland.

Ohio startups led the way by attracting $292 million, while Minnesota came in second place with $165 million followed by Illinois, which brought in $146 million.

“Investment activity in Midwest healthcare deals continues its upward trend, outperforming previous years’ activity for three years in a row. As with the rest of the country, Midwest healthcare investing fell dramatically in 2009 after strong years in 2007 and 2008, but it appears investors are again optimistic about Midwest deals. 2013 should be an interesting year to watch,” said Aram Nerpouni, interim president of BioEnterprise, in a news release.

Last year, the biotech sector saw the most influx in venture dollars with $487 million invested, followed by medical devices at $309 million and healthcare IT and service sector at $177 million.

Midwest Healthcare Venture Investment (By State)

Less than a year after it was brought to life, the 20-person company Pervasive Health Inc. is rolling out a suite of products to make data interpretation and integration easier for health information exchanges, hospitals and community health providers.

The company has designed a platform that brings together siloed patient data, so that it can be shared and interpreted by people across an ecosystem  – even those who aren’t IT-minded.

A hospital might use the platform, for example, to generate insight around four questions: How am I (or the patient/population) doing? How do I compare? How do I improve? If I made a change, did it make a difference?

“They want to understand if their population is getting better or worse, and what’s the root cause of that?” Chief Marketing Officer Rick Halton said. “Another part of that is they want to know if they are compliant to existing best practices.”

Halton said he sees other applications in pharmaceutical and public data sets as well, for example in marrying patient data with pharmaceutical data to help clinicians identify which patients are well-suited for drug trials, once a very expensive and time-consuming task. “We can bring that cost close to zero by providing an application at point of care that allows a consultant or physician to do that automatically,” he said.

The company was actually inspired by work done by the founders and some of the original investors in the mobile communications data management, Halton said. CEO Paul Magelli and CFO Geoff Phillips came from UK-based mobile communications company Apertio, which was bought by Nokia Siemens for $205 million in 2008. Apertio made a business out of providing mobile networks with infrastructure to consolidate information about their subscribers.

“Pervasive started with the recognition that there’s a lot of information in healthcare and more is being digitized and turned into EHRs and information that can be utilized,” Halton said.

The goal was to build an ecosystem onto which other developers could commercialize their own applications. “There are a ton of people out there with great ideas on how data can be utilized, but they just can’t get to market because of the cost of integration of data for a niche application,” Halton explained.

The Chicago-based company, like other data analytics firms GNS Healthcare and Predixion Software to name a few, is hoping that it might be able to help bring the healthcare industry up to speed. “If you look at what’s happening within banking, mobile and internet, information is been used a lot more creatively,” Halton said. “In healthcare, there are security and privacy concerns, which I think is a reason to be cautious. We believe that secure, private clouds are the way to go.”

[Photo from pakorn]

If there’s any truth to the notion that corporate VC-backed companies have a higher rate of overall success than those without corporate VC funding, here’s a company we should be keeping an eye on.

Naurex Inc., a young pharmaceutical company focused on psychiatry and neurology, rounded up $38 million from lead investor Baxter Ventures and a long line of others including Lundbeck, Takeda Ventures, Shire, Savitr Capital, Adams Street Partners, Latterell Venture Partners, Genesys Capital, PathoCapital, Druid BioVentures and Northwestern University.

It will use proceeds from the Series B round to continue a Phase 2b trial of GLYX-13, its lead drug candidate for the treatment of depression, and initiate trials of a second-generation drug.

Naurex is developing what it says is a new mechanism of action for modulating the NMDA receptor, which if overstimulated is thought to cause cell death associated with many neurological disorders. GLYX-13 is an IV drug that in initial clinical trials produced significant reductions in depression scores within 24 hours in patients who failed antidepressant therapy, according to Naurex.

CEO Derek Small said in a prepared statement that the drug has the potential to address failings of current antidepressants without serious side effects. It has a target New Drug Application date of 2016.

The company’s second-generation compound is an oral drug based on the same platform that is scheduled to begin clinical trials in early 2013.

Some NMDA receptor modulators like ketamine, an anesthetic drug, have shown antidepressant effects in lab studies but are associated with serious adverse effects. Memantine is another NMDAR modulator used in FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drugs marketed by Merz, Forest and Lundbeck – one of Naurex Inc.’s investors.

Two of Naurex’s pharma corporate investors have done other deals this quarter – Baxter Ventures invested in cancer/immune disorder drug startup Gliknik Inc., while Shire invested in a drug delivery method for drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier being developed by ArmaGen Technologies.

The Evanston, Illinois, company was founded in 2006 based on the work of researchers led by Dr. Joseph R. Moskal at Northwestern University’s Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, and raised a $18 million Series A in 2011.

There’s certainly a lot of talk about the funding issues that exist in translating academic research into commercial products. But on the path to commercialization, funding isn’t the only roadblock.

“NIH has funded a lot of this research, to the point where faculty members have been able to get their research a ways down the pathway to commercialization,” said John Flavin, managing director at life sciences investor Flavin Ventures.

Sometimes, another big part of the technology transfer problem is that researchers are so acutely focused on their technologies for so many years that they aren’t sure what it’s going to take to move forward with commercialization.

That’s where programs like Chicago Innovation Mentors come in. It’s just one of a second generation of team mentoring programs based on the model used by the renowned MIT Venture Mentoring Service. (Others include the Hub of Human Innovation Team Mentoring program in El Paso, Texas; Merlin Mentors in Madison, Wisconsin; and George Washington University Entrepreneurs Round Table (GWERT) Mentors program in Washington, D.C.

Flavin is also executive director of Chicago Innovation Mentors, and he said the hope of the program is to transform the entrepreneurial culture in the Windy City from one that’s been traditionally risk-averse to one that’s more like the country’s most startup-prolific areas such as Silicon Valley.

Chicago Innovation Mentors, CIM for short, helps academic would-be entrepreneurs and their medical technologies make the leap by organizing teams of business mentors around them at no cost. The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Illinois and the iBio Institute/PROPEL founded the initiative in late 2010, and Flavin came on board to lead it part-time in October of last year.

He said that in less than two years, 50 ventures and teams have been created with the help of 121 mentors.

The team-mentoring model lends itself to medical technology because of the industry’s complex, highly regulated, high-risk and IP-intensive nature, Flavin said.

“Our focus has been in healthcare because there’s a greater need and a lot of innovations that our technology transfer offices were looking to get on the commercial pathway,” he explained. That, combined with a growing appetite and activism among faculty, MBA students and postdocs looking for entrepreneurship opportunities, was the perfect impetus for the universities to launch the program.

The founding institutions vet faculty members and teams, choosing those with promising technologies and coachability to present to CIM’s mentors. After they present, the mentors can volunteer to be part of their mentoring teams, which meet monthly to discuss progress, questions and concerns.

“It’s the earliest stage that you can get involved, but it’s one of the most important ones,” said Flavin, himself a serial entrepreneur.

In many cases, the potential entrepreneurs have intellectual property but don’t have a company yet. That means the first milestone for many of the teams is incorporation of a business.

“What (academics are) challenged by is to understand that nailing the technology is just one small part of the overall equation of whether it can be turned into a product that can be brought to the marketplace,” Flavin said. “What we’ve found is it’s an eye-opening experience having mentors help them understand what the clinical strategy will look like, how long it will take, how much they’re going to be able to raise, and what kind of equity they’re going to have to give up. We’re not going to solve their problems, but we’re lighting up the road and putting a flashlight on the obstacles.”

That’s been a big driver behind the flood of accelerators and incubators that have emerged over the last decade, but unlike many of those programs, CIM doesn’t provide funding or office space, or take equity in the companies, and its focused solely on university discoveries.

Long-term, Flavin said the goal of CIM is to bring new disruptive products to the market in complex R&D areas like clean energy and physical sciences, and help the Chicago-area universities attract and retain top-level talent. In the short-term, it’s measuring success by looking at the ventures that are forming, the talent they’re recruiting, the capital they’re raising, and the customers they’re attracting.

To date, CIM companies have raised about $6 million in capital, consisting of some SBIR grants, some funds from the Illinois Invest Venture Fund and some from private placements.  Digital health company Agile Diagnosis, for example, raised a series A earlier this year, and device startup Corvida Medical raised a series B round. One company, Stage 8 Systems, was even sold this summer.

CIM is funded by its founding universities, new partner Argonne National Laboratory and a grant from the Chicago Biomedical Consortium. But the real fuel of the program is and will continue to be the spirit of innovation that seems to be especially present among healthcare entrepreneurs.

“In giving back, (the mentors) are able to quench that continuous thirst for innovation and start something from the beginning,” Flavin said. “There’s no replacement for that feeling of just being drawn to taking a risk and putting your best foot forward, and trying to get a product that you believe the world needs because it’s better than anything out there, particularly in healthcare where it’s not hard to be emotionally charged about a product or opportunity.”

Medicare reimbursement can make or break a healthcare business. A place to keep a closer eye on the way the Medicare winds are blowing is MedicareNewsGroup.com.

The independent news site – based just outside Chicago, Illinois – started drawing its first visitors earlier this year (it now gets about 30,000 unique visitors monthly). But it’s positioning itself to gather more influence around policy and other Medicare topics. It just announced the first four members of its advisory board: Reagan and Clinton Medicare adviser Stuart  Altman; Carter and Clinton adviser Dr. Robert Berenson; University of North Carolina medical school dean Dr. William L. Roper; and President George W. Bush adviser Gail R. Wilensky.

The organization is currently focused on targeting journalists to meet its goal of elevating the national discussion on Medicare by providing more informed and intelligent analysis of Medicare programs. It offers a free, embeddable widget anyone can use; is engaged in a series of media training seminars; and is trying to strike content-sharing deals to leverage its content. About 250 journalists are registered on the site, said Everett Mitchell, a former managing editor at The Detroit News who runs Medicare NewsGroup’s editorial team.

But in the end, Mitchell said Medicare NewsGroup wants to be the go-to Medicare resource for everyone: from journalists to insiders to consumers. The dearth of reporting on the topic, Medicare’s complexity and the ascension of Medicare-focused Paul Ryan as the GOP vice presidential nominee make a site like Medicare NewsGroup a necessity, Mitchell said.

The site is already full of good intel for anyone on the B2B side of healthcare. It carries white papers and reports back through 1998, aggregates legislative updates from Govtrack, and gathers latest news from across the Web on Medicare while writing some unique reports (in particular its series of plain-English Medicare FAQs and its Understanding Medicare section).

“There’s a thirst out there for Medicare News and information and how to accurately report and decipher what is going on,” Mitchell said.

The company has received some private investment, Mitchell said, and makes money through site sponsorships (Humana has joined in).

Medicare NewsGroup’s publisher is Judi Israel Rosen, the founder of Colchester Consulting Group and a former vice president with Bain & Company

The Mayo Clinic announced Wednesday that another health system is joining the ranks of the ever-expanding Mayo Clinic Care Network, which aim to link patients and doctors in other communities to expertise at Mayo.

The most recent entrant is Chicago’s NorthShore University HealthSystem. The agreement cements a relationship that Mayo has had with North Shore for years, a Mayo news release said. In July, Mayo added Dartmouth-Hitchcock, a nonprofit health system in New Hampshire to its network.

“When faced with a complex and difficult diagnosis, every patient wants and deserves a second opinion,” says Joseph Golbus, M.D., president of the NorthShore Medical Group, in a news release. “Patients travel from all over the world to consult with Mayo Clinic physicians. Thanks to this new collaboration, our patients will have seamless access to a network of experts from both institutions, without having to travel from home.”

The partnership will also allow NorthShore physicians to help patients to set up a visit at Mayo when they deem it necessary while providing follow-up care nearer the patients’ homes.

With this agreement, the Mayo Clinic Care Network now extends to Illinois, in addition to Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire and North Dakota. In all nine health providers are part of the care network, excluding Coborn Cancer Center, which is part of Mayo’s Cancer Care Network.

[Photo Credit: Big Stock Photo Healthcare Network]

Innovation isn’t always about creating something entirely new. Sometimes, it’s about taking lessons learned and applying them in a way that could benefit others, which is what Patrick Kelly and Joanne Frogge are hoping to do with BidMed LLC, a company that helps health systems manage their surplus assets by facilitating the selling, buying and trading of refurbished medical equipment.

Kelly and Frogge both have backgrounds in the surplus medical equipment business. They both had worked for medical auction house Centurion Service Group, and Kelly also had experience with MEDmarketplace, but the co-founders felt that these services weren’t meeting all the needs of their clients.

“So, we decided to build a company on best practices of what other people are doing,” said Frogge, who serves as the company’s chief operating officer.

BidMed wants to provide hospitals with the most competitive bid on the equipment they’re trying to dispose of, she said, but sometimes hospitals just don’t know the value of the equipment they have on the secondhand market. The company has an appraiser on staff who helps start the process, and through partnerships with vendors, the company can also refurbish and re-warrant the equipment before listing it to its international network of buyers.

BidMed has just raised $300,000 to launch an online marketplace that will serve as a bidding space for medical equipment sellers and buyers, like an eBay for hospitals. When the site launches in October, BidMed will be able to run auctions for its clients, or broadcast their items for sale online. Or, another feature will allow listings to be seen only by other material managers in the same health system, so that equipment can be transferred within a system. But it’s got a lot of competition on the Web – aside from Centurion and MEDmarketplace, there’s the lead generation site DotMed and MedWow, just to name a few.

“All these other companies go to hospitals and say, ‘this is our service,’ and make the hospital fit the service,” Frogge said. “We want to go to hospitals and say, ‘tell us about your process,’ and build a solution around them because each hospital is really unique.” They also tend to sell equipment as is and take weeks to get companies the payment for their items.

Like other companies, BidMed takes a portion of what a hospital’s equipment is sold for. And it’s already bringing in revenue, Frogge added, and is trying to grow as organically as posisble. The Chicago-based company formed in May and now has two sales employees. For now, the team is focused on sales and building the online marketplace. As soon as that’s launched, she said, the team plans on pitching to more health systems.