Wellness, nursing, radioimmunotherapy and a new swine flu test — MedCity Weekend Rounds, Sept. 5, 2009

Michael Feuer’s Max-Wellness enterprise is a big bet on the profit potential of wellness. Companies today offer blood tests, wireless devices, wellness-styled pharmacies, incentive-based wellness programs for employees of clients, and a myriad of other services hoping to cash in on the desire to keep people healthy rather than heal (and pay for) their illnesses.

Wellness revealed its high-profit potential about two years ago. Companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods started buying vitamin-water and health-bar companies. It’s continued to evolve since then. Colorado’s Pharmaca, which combines traditional pharmacy with wellness services, last month raised almost $7 million. Midwest companies like Allostatix (wellness blood test); Engagement Health (corporate wellness) and Red Brick Health (corporate wellness) have raised or are raising capital. Cleveland Clinic soon plans to launch its own brand of wellness services.

Ohio legislators return to work on Tuesday after almost a month’s recess. The General Assembly soon will consider — and likely approve — House Bill 206, which is a bill to expand the power of advanced practice nurses (APNs) to prescribe highly addictive drugs like oxycodone and morphine. House Bill 205 would require a circulating nurse — whose job it is to monitor procedures — to oversee all procedures in their entirety that occur in operating and invasive procedure rooms in hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers.

Friday was a good day for medical rebels like Dr. Roger Macklis who see radiation oncology as revolutionary treatment: Spectrum Pharmaceuticals said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the label for Zevalin, allowing the radioimmunotherapy to be used as part of a first-line treatment for certain non-Hodgkins lymphoma. On Tuesday, Diagnostic HYBRIDS in Athens, Ohio, said the FDA added another virus — the swine flu or Novel H1N1 virus — to the list of those that can be detected by the the company’s D3 Ultra test kit.

In money-raising efforts, a new health-care investment fund that takes a “humanitarian approach with a profit flair” will test the maturity of Northeast Ohio’s medical industry. The $5 million Medical Growth Fund gathers some of the region’s well-known health-care entrepreneurs to invest in medical device, health IT, and health-care services businesses and provide an initial investment of up to $500,000.

Beachwood, Ohio, teleradiology company Franklin & Seidelmann Subspecialty Radiology raised $12.5 million as it continues to expand into new markets and add services, the Cleveland Clinic received $6 million to help build a 72-bed tower at its suburban Hillcrest Hospital, KemPharm in Iowa City, Iowa, which focuses on developing drugs that are harder to abuse, raised close to $3.5 million, and another $14 million in federal stimulus money was doled out to Ohio institutions for biomedical research through National Institutes of Health grants.

The president of the Indiana vascular business Ash Access Technologies is trying to raise $2 million for a related biotech company, Youngstown feeding-tube maker Syncro Medical Innovations raised $500,000 through debt, and a researcher at the University of Cincinnati will use $850,000 from the National Institutes of Health to develop technology that would help health-care staff to better interpret speech. Meanwhile, Cleveland-based AIM Pharmakon, which provides marketing and consulting services for the pharmaceutical industry, received a seven-year job-creation tax credit worth about $205,589, and Cincinnati’s AssureRx, which is developing a genetic test for psychiatric medicines, will receive a $1.2 million low-interest loan from the state of Ohio.

Hope you’re having a good holiday weekend.