Weekend Rounds: NEOUCOM gets a new president; Lake Health opens new hospital

Here are five of the top stories from MedCity News this week:

Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) in Rootsown, Ohio, named Jay A. Gershen, vice chancellor of external affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, as its sixth president. Dr. Gershen will replace Dr. Lois Nora, who has been the university’s president and medical school dean since 2002, on Jan. 15. Gershen said leading the university in the future will be “all about building partnerships.”

Lake Health System opened its TriPoint Medical Center in Concord Township, Ohio and closed its LakeEast Medical Center in downtown Painesville, Ohio this week. Building a brand new, full-service hospital is a rare event — even in Northeast Ohio, a region that explodes with hospital renovation and expansion projects, and new specialty hospitals and outpatient treatment centers. But Lake Health System leaders decided it was less expensive – and fit patient needs better — to build a new hospital in the suburbs than to renovate an aging hospital in the city.

Diabetes has a substantial impact on the quality of sufferers’ lives. So Ohio State University doctoral student Louis Nemzer decided he wanted to do something to make the lives of diabetic patients a little easier — he is leading an effort to develop a continuous blood glucose meter that doesn’t require pricking the skin to do its job. Nemzer worked with physics professor and materials researcher Arthur Epstein to develop a meter that does its work with light, color and an enzyme-embedded polymer.

Some medical residents have a new job requirement: sleep. Internal medicine residents at Cleveland’s University Hospitals and the local VA Medical Center are required to take a three to four hour nap during their 30-hour shifts. Summa Health System in Akron has for years experimented by limiting internal medicine residents to 16-hour shifts — and most pull just 13 hours. It’s part of an evolution — or revolution, depending on whom you talk to — on how to manage the work hours of medicine’s youngest doctors.

This week’s financial news: Orthopediatrics, the Warsaw, Ind., company that develops implants and other orthopedic therapies for children, is raising $6 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission… DGIMed Ortho, the Minnetonka, Minn., company that is developing medical devices to help heal long-bone fractures, is raising up to $4.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission… The Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University has been awarded six economic stimulus grants worth $3.7 million by federal institutions that support innovative research and academic programs… ClearCount Medical Solutions in Pittsburgh, Pa., which is developing RFID technology that keeps count of surgical sponges, closed on $3.4 million of financing led by Draper Triangle Ventures… Neuros Medical Inc., a Cleveland, Ohio, start-up company that is developing a neurostimulation device to block chronic pain, has landed $1.8 million from several investors during its first round of venture financing.