Valley View-based Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies announced today the product launch of Kinesia ProView™ to visualize motor symptom severity response during programming of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson’s disease. Kinesia ProView provides a standardized platform to quantitatively assess how symptoms such as tremor, bradykinesia, and dyskinesias change in response to specific DBS settings during outpatient programming procedures. Developed in collaboration with clinical studies at one of BioOhio’s Founding Members, Cleveland Clinic, as well as the University of Minnesota.

The ProView system is FDA cleared to market in the United States, is CE Marked, and has Health Canada and Australian TGA approval for distribution in international markets. The system integrates a secure, HIPAA compliant web application and a broadband enabled tablet interface with wireless patient sensors. Deep brain stimulation represents a growing therapy for movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease as current estimates indicate a $500 million global market with projections to over $1 billion by 2020.

“Parkinson’s disease is an incredibly complex and challenging disease for both patients and physicians”, said Joseph P. Giuffrida, PhD, President and Principal Investigator at Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies. “Patients may encounter a wide variety of constantly changing symptoms while clinicians have the challenge of matching patient characteristics to an increasingly complex array of treatment options and settings. The Kinesia product suite was developed to improve disease management of Parkinson’s through quantitative assessment and telemedicine with targeted clinical applications. Kinesia ProView builds on that momentum for the application of DBS programming.”

DBS involves implanting an electrode in a specific area of the brain, and then adjusting stimulation settings to a level that alleviates symptoms without causing side effects. While the therapy has been shown to be effective for treating Parkinson’s motor symptoms, there can be disparity in outcomes among implanted patients due to varied postoperative management, particularly concerning DBS programming optimization. Variability in patient outcomes may be due to programmer training and experience and the time required to determine an optimal set of DBS parameters. Programmers can adjust several settings including the contact, polarity, frequency, pulse width, and amplitude of stimulation. This creates a tremendous amount of possible combinations that must be evaluated over multiple types of motor symptoms in a limited time during an office visit.  Kinesia ProView quantitatively assesses motor symptoms in response to stimulation settings and provides tools to quickly visualize the programming space. During a programming assessment, the patient wears a wireless sensor to assess motor symptoms such as tremor, bradykinesia, and dyskinesia at each DBS setting. A tablet PC application creates color-coded tuning maps as the programming session progresses, which display specific symptom severities as a function of stimulation settings.  These tuning maps allow physicians to visually assess the programming parameter space and optimize the final settings for specific symptoms and battery consumption.  Once the programming session is complete, patient data and tuning maps are transmitted via broadband connectivity to a cloud-based server for storage, reporting, and trending using the Kinesia web application.

For the last decade, Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies has been the worldwide leader in developing quantitative assessment tools and telemedicine technology for Parkinson’s disease. Fueled by strong funding support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute on Aging, the Kinesia technology suite has been commercialized and clinically validated in numerous studies and with hundreds of patients.  Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies will be showcasing the technology at the Movement Disorder Society Congress in Sydney, Australia in June 2013.

Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies thanks the NIH for their support of this development (3R44AG033520-02).

About Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies
Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies is committed to pioneering innovative biomedical technologies to serve research, education, and medical communities, improving access to medical technology for diverse populations, and positively impacting quality of life for people around the world.

Media Contact
Amelia Earhart, 216-446-2431 – aaearhart@GLNeuroTech.com

“Is the Medical Market your next move?” That will be the topic of  Dr. Frank Douglas’ keynote address at the 2013 Manufacturing Mart, and for most of you reading this, the biomedical and bioscience arenas have likely been your domain since high school. But for those who may be long on manufacturing experience but perhaps short on exposure to the many opportunities presented by our burgeoning bioscience and biomedical industries, this keynote and the event in general offer a unique insight.

Below is some information on the event. We’ll provide a report as the event draws closer and perhaps a wrap-up at the end of the event.

What is Manufacturing Mart 2013?

Manufacturing Mart 2013 is a supply chain trade show and conference that is geared for showcasing Tier 2, Tier 3, secondary process manufacturers, product designers and engineers to supply chain managers working for OEM and Tier 1 suppliers.

Who will attend?

A sampling of supply chain managers have been invited to walk the show including companies such as Parker, Eaton, Nordson, United Technologies, Caterpillar, Ford, Honda, Gojo, Cub Cadet, Moen, Superior Products, Orbital Research, Invacare, Steris, Invacare, Timken , just to name a few.

Our upfront request to them has been: Come see qualified manufacturers ready to do business. We think you’re going to love what you see.

Who is exhibiting?

An example of the manufacturers in this year’s show is Penn United, Fargo Machine, Brakey Energy, Profile Grinding, Tendon Manufacturing, and Hedstrom Plastics. Other supply chain vendors include David Wolf Design, Matrix, Quantus, Discover Global, and Kuno Creative for example.

What are the job titles of the people you expect to attend?
Supply Chain Manager, Purchasing Agent, Manufacturing Engineer, Plant Manager, Director of Manufacturing Operations, CEO, President, Owner, Buying Managers, Shop Manager, Design Engineer and Manufacturing Employee.

We encourage manufacturers/exhibitors to bring everyone in the plant.  You never know who went to high school with the supply chain manager you’ve wanted to meet for years.  Given a chance to meet an old acquaintance could bring  opportunity in your door.

When is this year’s show and conference?

May 14 -15 at the John S. Knight Center in Akron, OH.  The doors open at 10AM to the public.

How do I register?

Go to www.mfgtradeshow.com.  You can register online anytime or call the Exhibit Coordinator, Jamie Moore at (216) 672 0662 x102 to lend a hand.

BioOhio Sr. Director of Workforce and Education, shown with Melisa Carr, Assistant Adult Director, Ashland County West-Holmes Career Center.  The Ashland Center is a long-time BioOhio member and leader for innovative bioscience educational programs in the Mansfield/Ashland area. A unique approach of this center is that it serves both adult and high school students with a  PLTW-based bioscience technologies program.

The head of the Career Center, Superintendent Mike McDaniel also attended the event sponsored by Sen. Rob Portman to shine a light on career, education, and workforce issues and opportunities in high growth industries such as bioscience.

photo courtesy Greatlakesgeek.com

In a letter to his many associates and friends, Chris Coburn detailed his gratitude and remarkable 13-year career with the Cleveland Clinic’s commercialization arm.

As stated in his letter,

The next phase of my life and career will be in Boston where I will join the executive team at Partners Healthcare.

Best wishes to Chris and his wife Nancy in their new endeavor.

Here’s a more complete write-up at Crain’s Cleveland Business.

. . . and then Columbus, and then Cleveland. That’s because in Ohio, April is the month that BioOhio helps to cultivate the careers of those Ohioans who aspire to work in a bioscience field. At the same time, BioOhio also helps growing Ohio bioscience organizations find the workplace talent they need to continue to thrive.

On April 9th, in southwest Ohio, BioOhio began its annual series of three Career Fairs to be held across the state. The first event was hosted at the Mason Municipal Center, and was supported through the efforts of the city of Mason as well as BioOhio member AssureRx Health. Over 150 job-seekers brought their sparkling resumes and smiles in the hopes of beginning or furthering a career in one of several key bioscience disciplines. A dozen bioscience organizations were on hand to greet and conduct informal interviews.

Judging from reaction of Shari Strunk of Forest Pharmaceuticals, the event was quite a success. “This was our first time participating in the BioOhio Career Fair,” says Shari, the HR manager of Human Resources.

“It was a great event for our company,” she said. “We saw many qualified candidates and enjoyed networking with other companies in our niche industry.”

Will she and Forest Pharmaceuticals do it again? They do, and they also look forward to attending similar events that help support and grow their industry – and of course, help grow their company.

Another exhibitor shares Shari’s enthusiasm. Adam Busemeyer of Medpace , a clinical development and contract research organization, said that his organization has a variety of current recruitment needs.

“It was nice to meet with potential candidates from different backgrounds in the Life Science fields,” he said. ” These various backgrounds and skill sets may help us to fill the positions we have open for entry level clinical research professionals and other opportunities in our other clinical groups as well as the Laboratories.”

Two more BioOhio career events are coming up quickly. The first is in – you guessed it – Columbus on Monday, April 15th, and the last in Cleveland on Thursday, April 18th.

Learn more or register

Just another day in the life for a group of Ohio State students. You know, attend classes, hang out with friends, play some video games . . . all while making some time to build a winning business plan centered on creation of a new product that provides a novel method for early cancer detection.

Inventor Kinshuk Mitra , a 19-year OSU student, has created a filter that he and his team will provide earlier detection of rogue tumor cells from blood samples. The ten students are in the thick of a competition to win a $350,000 prize at a national competition at Rice University.

See a brief video of the poster for this project that this team just posted:

Read the complete story courtesy of Carrie Ghose at Coumbus Business First via Matt Schutte.

As the Ohio affiliate of AdvaMed (Advanced Medical Technology Association), BioOhio has joined forces with other key industry associations to help repeal the tax on Medical Devices. The latest development, reported this afternoon by BioOhio President Tony Dennis, is that for the first time a majority of members of the House of Representatives support the ‘‘Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2013’’ that would repeal the excise tax on medical devices. The fight now moves to the Senate to ensure a majority there support

Thanks to Tony Dennis and all who are working to repeal this tax, protect medical innovation, protect jobs and ensure affordable healthcare for all who rely on medical devices.

After creating a device used to treat over 500 patients and tracking outcomes for up to seven years, a BioOhio member is pleased to announce a large step forward with one key development.

On April 2, the Garfield Heights, OH medical device company announced that it has received a Notice of Allowance of a key US patent which describes a device for replacing a damaged spinal disc. What’s particularly unique about AxioMed’s Freedom Lumbar Disc, its first product, is its asymmetrical design which is said to improve performance and stability. In addition, the device is available in multiple configurations to meet the unique needs of patient and surgical applications. As a result,  Freedom Lumbar and Cervical discs  are said to improve patient outcomes due to its replication of the natural functions of the patient’s native disc.

Read the complete news release here.

AxioMed’s website is www.axiomed.com.

Bill Tacon, Sr. Director, Workforce & Education, BioOhio

An April 12th event in Lewis Center will bring together key Ohio business leaders, educators, and public policy officials to work on an important mission: putting more Ohioans to work more effectively in key industries. The Ohio Job and Workforce Development Summit will provide an opportunity for business leaders to discuss their unique needs for talent, ideas to increase efficiency, and best practices for collaborating to create more job opportunities and economic growth for Ohioans.

A key segment of the Conference will focus on the needs of employers who continue to build out Ohio’s exploding bioscience industry. BioOhio’s Senior Director, Workforce and Education, Bill Tacon, Ph.D,, will be featured in one of the breakout panels, together with DG Medical CEO, Mike Sieron, and Sinclair Community College’s VP of Workforce Development, Deb Norris.

To register,  R.S.V.P with your (1) name, (2) company, and (3) contact information by April 2, 2013 to Suzanne Hawk at Suzanne_Hawk@portman.senate.gov or 614.469.6774

For more information, please contact: Stephen White, Central Ohio District Director, Office of U.S. Senator Rob Portman at 614.469.6774

To access a PDF document with agenda details and other information, click here.

The distance is only about 60 miles, but for the management of Midmark Corporation, that relatively short distance  represents a major milepost. Yesterday, Dayton’s City Commission approved an economic development agreement that will result in Midmark moving its headquarters from Versailles to Dayton into the former headquarters of the NCR Corporation.

Over 900 Midmark workers in Versailles – part of a world-wide workforce of over 1,600 – produce a broad range of health care products and services. Midmark’s move is yet another indication that the Dayton area is gaining steam as a hub of bioscience activity.

Midmark is said to be joining at least 30 bioscience and medical device companies already located in the Dayton area.

For Greg Blackmore, COO of Midmark, three considerations were central to the decision to move the headquarters to Dayton. The first was associated with securing the types of talent the organization needs to grow in its headquarters operation.

“We identified a couple of years ago some existing recruiting challenges,” said Blackmore.  “Versailles and Darke County gives us a great work location for our manufacturing operation and for a variety of shared services,” he added, but Midmark found that the locally available talent could not match what was accessible in Dayton.

Beyond recruiting new employees, Blackmore also touched upon the importance of selecting a location that considers current headquarters employees. As he explained, “When you look at the move, you have to ask ‘what am I going to do to the incumbents in selecting the new location?’ ”

He added, “What you don’t want to do is move to a new location and lose all the people you currently have.”  Again, the relatively close proximity of Dayton to Versailles was key to being sensitive to the needs of existing teammates while putting in place strategies to meet tomorrow’s goals.

The third major consideration, specifically the former NCR headquarters, was both the proximity and close relationship with the University of Dayton (UD) itself. One clear connection to UD comes straight from the top: Dr. Anne Eiting Klamar, president and CEO of Midmark.

As a member of UD’s board, Klamar saw first hand a natural alignment between UD and Midmark. The UD site was one of several properties under consideration, but Blackmore stresses that it was more than bricks and mortar that sealed the selection of the former NCR site.

“It’s the proximity to the University of Dayton and the talent,” he said, citing the UD Research Institute and the MBA program in addition to other centers of learning.

In 2013, sixty miles doesn’t seem such a long distance, but today’s announcement makes it clear that a mere 60 miles can represent a giant leap for the future of one important Ohio bioscience company.

See coverage at the University of Dayton site.

Read a more complete story from the Dayton Daily News.