Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) continues to feel the love from credit ratings agencies, with Fitch upgrading the Ohio company’s outlook to “positive.” Fitch attributed the change in Cardinal Health’s outlook to the company’s focus on paying down debt, and expected strong financial performance and disciplined acquisition activity over the next year.

Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) will manage and operate the Knoxville, Tennessee, cyclotron facility of ProVision Healthcare through an agreement that expands the Dublin, Ohio, drug distributor’s ability to make molecular imaging agents nationwide. Ohio’s largest corporation has been partnering with academia and industry to push the boundaries of nuclear medicine — and have first dibs on commercializing the industry’s innovations — by using its know-how and technologies to enable researchers to come up with new products.

Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) Foundation has awarded a total of $1 million in grants to 40 organizations for projects designed to improve medication management and operating room safety.The grants range from $7,500 to $37,500 each, and are part of a healthcare quality-improvement program that Cardinal launched in 2008, according to a statement. Cardinal has awarded [...]

Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) has closed the books on fiscal 2010 — a year of transition that included continuing financial and operating turnarounds, as well as a major spin-off — while raising its earnings sights for the coming year.Ohio’s largest company earned $642.2 million, or $1.77 a diluted share, in fiscal 2010, which ended [...]

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration said it is requiring nine medical device companies to conduct postmarket analysis on a connection between needless connectors and higher rates of blood stream infections.In a notice posted on the Centers for Devices and Radiological Health web site, officials said that the agency is “aware of [...]

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s has revised its outlook for Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) to “positive” from “stable” and maintained its corporate credit rating — a nod to the Dublin, Ohio, company’s continuing turnaround.Drug and medical product distributor Cardinal Health got a similar acknowledgment from Moody’s Investors Service in May when that rating [...]

Nitric BioTherapeutics Inc., which is developing treatments for athlete’s foot and other infections, has pulled in an additional $1.7 million of an ongoing funding round that’s projected to hit $20 million.The fundraise, which was led by existing investors, brings the company’s total funding to about $16 million since 2006, CEO Frank McCaney said. Nitric Bio’s [...]

Devicor Medical Products Inc., the Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin, fledgling holding company backed by Chicago private equity firm GTCR Golder Rauner LLC, has made its first acquisition: the breast care business of Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon Endo-Surgery unit near Cincinnati, Ohio.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.But nearly 300 Ethicon Endo-Surgery employees who are connected [...]

Ohio Third Frontier commissioners made a slew of biomedical grants under two programs today.Recommended for more than $4.9 million under the Ohio Third Frontier Biomedical Program:– CardioX Corp., Dublin, in collaboration with Nottingham-Spirk Design Associates in Cleveland and QTest Labs in Columbus, was awarded $986,373 to finalize designs and clinical protocols for a new method [...]

A handful of Columbus, Ohio-area organizations are combining their strength to get one of the companies’ drugs — a radiopharmaceutical that identifies cancerous lymph notes in patients with breast cancer and melanoma — into the marketplace.To begin with, Phylogeny Inc. in Columbus and Neoprobe Corp. in Dublin will work together to develop head and neck [...]