News and notes from the day in MedCity, Ohio:
The Ohio Third Frontier program has attracted $3.2 billion in private investment since it began seven years ago, according to the Columbus Dispatch said. The report was sponsored by the Ohio Business Roundtable, a group of the state’s largest companies that is renewal of the program through a May ballot initiative. “The Third Frontier has emerged as the centerpiece of Ohio’s economic-development platform and the envy of other elected leaders across America,” said the group’s leaders in the report’s preface.
Diagnostics products maker Neoprobe Corp. in Dublin is expected to reward investors big in less than two years as its radioactive tracing agent is seen becoming the first U.S.-approved agent to determine the spread of cancers in the lymphatic system, according to a Reuters story at Forbes.com. Analysts said the product Lymphoseek’s biggest advantage over other agents is its ability to determine if the sentinel, or first, lymph node reached by metastasizing cancer cells, contains cancer or not.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
Cincinnati’s Deaconess Hospital will close its emergency room Jan. 11 and lay off about 80 employees in early February, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. It’s the latest restructuring for the unprofitable hospital, which will concentrate on outpatient clinics,mental health and long-term care to try to save money. An out-of-town buyer backed out of a potential sale earlier this fall, leading to the latest financial strategy, spokeswoman Barbara Lohr told the Enquirer.
Cleveland leveraged-buyout firm Riverside Co. has acquired a Tennessee company that provides medication therapy management services, according to Crain’s Cleveland Business. PharmMD Solutions LLC has 30 employees. The company identifies and addresses medication overuse, underuse and misuse. The deal includes PharmMD’s SmartMTM Analytics, which identifies drug therapy issues, suggests alternatives and provides clinical rationale for recommendations.
Pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. and its corporate affiliates have agreed to pay $8.5 million to the state of Florida to resolve Medicaid fraud allegations, according to Business First of Columbus. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum this week unveiled details of the settlement with Roxane, which employs nearly 1,000 in Columbus. Sister company Ben Venue Laboratories and its Bedford Laboratories employ more than 1,300 people in Bedford. The company had been accused of reporting false and inflated prices for medications, resulting in Medicaid reimbursement overpayments.
Recently, Scrip Clinical Research, a news and analysis service for the global pharmaceutical industry, interviewed Simon Higginbotham, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer of Kendle, a contract research organization in Cincinnati, according to Dialed-In. With an increasing number of biopharmaceutical companies outsourcing their clinical development functions to CRO partners, Scrip asked Higginbotham to shares his thoughts on best practice in strategic partnering. Scrip Clinical published the interview as a Q&A column under the title, Mutual gain: How collaboration inspires success (pdf).
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Streamline Health Solutions Inc., the Cincinnati provider of document workflow solutions for hospitals, said St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, Conn., has selected Streamline Health to ensure compliance with OSHA Voluntary Protection Programs, according to PRNewswire release. St. Vincent’s Medical Center is a 473-bed teaching and referral hospital and is a member of Ascension Health, the nation’s largest Catholic and nonprofit health system in the United States.
Life Line Screening in Independence has become a corporate partner and sponsor of the Vascular Disease Foundation in Lakewood, Colo., according to a press release. The partnership brings together the foundation’s expertise in vascular disease and educational resources with Life Line Screening’s vascular testing service. Life Line Screening provides community-based health screenings for conditions such as aortic aneurysms — a dangerous ballooning of the aorta — without a prescription from a doctor.
