Murray, Utah, was selected for the new 1.2 million-square-foot Intermountain Medical Center because it is dead center in the middle of the Salt Lake City metro area. It is also perfectly located at the intersection of major freeways and roadways.
“We have a need to be closer to the growing parts of this community and be situated to take care of their needs,” says David Grauer, administrator and CEO of the new $362.5 million facility, which is part of the Intermountain Health Care system. He says the region's population has moved to the south and to the west, which historically had been based in the northeast part of the region. When it is completed in 2007, the medical center will be one of the largest medical centers in the Western United States.
In Texas, Memorial Hermann Healthcare System is undertaking the largest capital campaign program and expansion in its history, with activity taking place throughout the Houston metro area. In fact, the Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza, which broke ground in September, is the city's largest commercial construction project currently underway. The plaza is the first such project to be built in the Texas Medical Center in 13 years. Once it is completed, the $155 million project will be the largest medical office building in the center.
Another project the system is undertaking is the Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital, which began a 120,000-square-foot medical office building expansion in July and is expected to be completed in July 2005.
“We have grown from a campus that had about 100,000 square feet to 500,000 to 600,000 square feet for our campus,” says Steve Sanders, vice president and CEO, Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital. The expansion will accommodate the growth in the area as well as a redesign of services, moving some key services that are traditionally preformed in the hospital and placing them in an outpatient center because it is more efficient.
Meeting an expanding population's health care needs is also important in McAllen, Texas, where the health care industry is a leading employer in the region, featuring 12 hospitals, which all feature outpatient facilities. Among these hospitals are heart, rehabilitation and cancer centers. The hospitals are located primarily in four cities in the region, with the main cluster in McAllen. There are also 252 medical clinics in the region.
“When I first moved to McAllen 32 years ago, there was one hospital, which was downtown and it was an older facility,” says Nancy Boultinghouse, marketing director, McAllen Economic Development Corp.
The McAllen MSA includes 653,000 people in Texas and 1.2 million people across the border in Reynosa, Mexico. In addition, two hours away in Monterey, Mexico there is another large community with millions of people. What's more, North Texans winter in McAllen. Notes Boultinghouse, “We are the regional health care hub for the area.”
She says growth in the health care industry has been incredible. She says Driscoll Hospital, based in Corpus Christi, has opened a children's specialty clinic in the area. Texas A&M University's South Texas Center for Rural Public Health and Cornerstone Regional Hospital, L.P. have also opened in the area. In nearby Edinburg the regional hospital will become a children's hospital. Rio Grande Regional Hospital has added a significant amount of square footage and has created a new façade for the front of the hospital.
In projected hospital activity, the Springfield-Eugene, Ore., area has two hospital projects on the drawing board. McKenzie-Willamette Hospital has merged with Triad Hospital Inc., a national hospital operations company. The group is looking for a new site in the area. PeaceHealth's proposed hospital project has been delayed.
“There are some land use disputes from neighboring property owners who are concerned about the size of the facility that will be built,” says Jack Roberts, executive director, Lane Metro Partnership. “It is possible PeaceHealth will have to make some modifications to accommodate the concerns. For the most part, the issues that have caused the delay have been more procedural issues than substantive.”
Roberts notes the region is excited about the prospect of having both hospitals build newer and larger hospitals. “We think it is an indication of people in this industry recognizing the aging population and the increased demand for and availability of sophisticated medical services technology,” he says.
PeaceHealth has purchased an empty 300,000-square-foot facility for a subsidiary, Oregon Medical Laboratories, which will be retrofitted and running within a year.
State of the Art
While undertaking huge efforts to serve communities' health care needs with facilities, hospital beds and outpatient clinics, health care systems are also implementing the latest tools of the trade.
Grauer says the new Intermountain Medical Center, which was set to begin concrete and steel work at the site in October, will feature five centers of excellence at its 100-acre site.
These separate centers, which will connect to one another, will feature the latest technologies in terms of imaging and radiation equipment, among other machinery. “We have long been a leader in information systems and we will continue with that with as much automated management as we can do,” Grauer notes. The hospital will implement a paperless system and use an all computerized entry system. Grauer notes the hospital is still working out the details of this process.
The medical center's five centers of excellence were designed to enhance their accessibility and create a warm inviting atmosphere that is easy to navigate, Grauer says. He notes the five centers include an oncology cancer center with outpatient cancer services; an outpatient pavilion that will house the bulk of the hospital's outpatient services; a heart and lung hospital; the main hospital with operating rooms and emergency rooms and inpatient beds; and a woman's center. Physicians' offices will also be located on several of the floors.
Sanders says Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital's new expansion will feature an outpatient imaging center, a breast and bone densitometry center, and a bladder and continence center on the first floor. The second floor will feature an outpatient surgery center. Space will also be leased to physicians.
Naturally, hospital activity draws ancillary services, creating clusters. This thinking is behind the creation of Kelley Pointe Medical Park in the 240-acre Kelley Pointe Business Park in Edmond, Okla. The medical park is being developed by Medical Development Solutions of Wichita, Kan., and will be located on 12 acres in the business park, which is south of Renaissance Women's Hospital.
The Kelley Pointe Medical Park's master plan shows various medical office buildings going up around a proposed ambulatory surgical center. Janet Yowell, executive director, Edmond Economic Development Authority, says the ambulatory surgical center is still proposed at this time.
“What is located around this intersection is the Renaissance Women's Hospital,” Yowell says. “Of course, with that there are a lot of doctors' offices and medical support located around that intersection. In the last couple of year we have had 30,000 square feet of space taken up with doctors' offices.”
Yowell says a boom in population is behind the increase in health care facilities. She says Edmond is a high-end suburb of Oklahoma City, and has been growing at 3.5 percent for the last 12 years.
Industry Support
Yowell says the health care industry in Edmond is supported by the University of Central Oklahoma's nursing program, which is located in Edmond, and by the University of Oklahoma's College of Medicine, which has a teaching hospital located 10 miles south of the city.
Roberts says PeaceHealth has had discussions with the Oregon Health & Science University located in Portland to create more of a presence in Eugene, which is home to the University of Oregon. In addition, there is a nursing program at Lane Community College.
Boultinghouse says the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio sends students ready for residency to the hospitals in the McAllen area to undergo their medical training. She adds that a regional academic health care center is going up in nearby Harlingen. The University of Texas-Pan American will soon build a biotech facility in Edinburg, which will lead to further development of the biotech industry.
In Edmond, a growing base of nanotech companies is conducting work that will have applications in the medical industry. A local company has a contract with the U.S. Navy to use nanotech processes in drug delivery.
Hospitals and medical centers are working hard to bring newer and state-of-the-art facilities online to accommodate the nation's health care needs. And as they grow, ancillary facilities follow suit. These clusters continue to maintain their edge with a base of local nurses and doctors, and with the ability to train them. All to the benefit of the area's citizens.
For complete details on the organizations featured in this article visit:
Edmond Economic Development Authority, www.eeda.com
Intermountain Medical Center, www.ihc.com
Lane Metro Partnership, www.lanemetro.com
McAllen Economic Development Corp., www.medc.org
Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital, www.memorialhermann.org
Top States for Health
Based on number of establishments
New Branches
1. Florida
2. Texas
3. California
4. New York
5. Pennsylvania
6. Illinois
7. North Carolina
8. Georgia
9. Ohio
10. Arizona
Startups
1. California
2. Florida
3. Texas
4. New York
5. Georgia
6. Ohio
7. Illinois
8. Washington
9. New Jersey
10. Michigan
Data include the following SICs: 80XX Health Services
Source: Since 1990, BizMiner has built its reputation on quality research in the fields of economic and business development. The company tracks more than 11 million U.S. businesses annually, developing vitality benchmarks for more than 18,000 lines of business and every U.S. county, MSA and state.
Measures include business retention, entrepreneurial activity, new branch attraction, business relocation trends and concentrations of high-growth firms.
Visit www.bizminer.com for access to more than 1 million local and national marketing research and financial analysis reports.
Innovative Apparatus
By Rachel Duran
SmartPill Diagnostics' drug-medical device combination is one product fueling this emerging trend in the medical device industry. The startup company, based at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, recently completed Phase I clinical trials for a new ingestible capsule that measures pressure and chemistry as it travels through the stomach and intestines.
Next up for the company is the preparation of this new, noninvasive medical device for Phase II trials in January. If approved by the FDA, the capsule will give doctors and researchers further insight into disorders of the gastrointestinal tract.
Because medical devices span a broad category ranging from surgical products to contact lenses to prosthetic devices to X-ray machines, the business advantages found in clusters are key to the industry's success.
Consider Boston, which received $1.2 billion in National Institutes of Health funding in 2001. That same year, the venture capital community invested $1 billion in Boston's life sciences industry, which includes medical devices.
Boston's medical device cluster includes companies involved in a variety of products such as software-based solutions for medical imaging and companies conducting contract research in medical polymers. Among the city's programming are two major programs that support the industry's endeavors.
LifeTech Boston, administered by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, assists companies in leveraging Boston's scientific and commercial assets, connecting them with research and principal investigators. The Back Streets program works with the city's manufacturing community, including medical device manufacturers, in areas of financing assistance, site location and workforce development.
Boston's higher education infrastructure and medical institutions are also attractive to medical device companies. “We have Massachusetts General Hospital, which conducts imaging and medical device research,” says Glen Comiso, director, LifeTech Boston. The area is also home to Boston Medical Center.
BioSquare, a biomedical research and business park, is located adjacent to Boston University Medical Center. MassMEDIC, a state-run organization focusing on medical devices, is located at BioSquare. The Boston community is also home to Harvard Medical School.
Comiso says recent expansion activity includes Cambridge Consultants, which will expand from Cambridge, England, to Boston to conduct further research in imaging. The company expects to eventually grow to 75 employees.
The intellectual property being developed in Boston, and across the country, is finding its way to New England's Knowledge Corridor, which runs between New Haven, Conn., and North Hampton, Mass., for the manufacturing of these products. The corridor has formed across the state lines because the labor market is a joint labor market. In fact, the corridor ranks in the top 10 in the country in terms of intellectual property and production in the medical devices industry.
“In conversations with companies in Boston they say they are looking at our area to do the manufacturing of their intellectual property,” says Dr. Joseph Bronzino, president and executive director, Biomedical Engineering and Alliance Consortium (BEACON). He is also a professor of biomedical engineering at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. “Boston has the intellectual capital and yet there is no need for them to create the manufacturing capacity that already exists in our corridor.”
In this knowledge corridor there are about 300 medical technology companies, 105 of which are directly related to medical device manufacturing, while the remaining companies are precision manufacturing companies that are shifting capabilities from areas such as aerospace and conducting work in the medical domain.
“One of the major assets of our region is a large contingent of precision manufacturing firms that have the skills and capacity to conduct precision manufacturing for a wide variety of medical device companies throughout the United States,” Bronzino notes.
This corridor also has significant assets in medical technology as far as academic and clinical facilities, which creates tremendous intellectual property capacity, said Harvard University's cluster specialist Michael Porter when he conducted a study on the area's capabilities earlier this year. These assets include 32 colleges and universities and a number of hospitals and research centers.
In another part of the country, the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania also takes a regional approach for its medical device clusters. Among the medical device manufacturers in the area are Aesculap, B. Braun Medical, Inc., Fisher Scientific Svc and OraSure Technologies, Inc. Olympus America will open it new facility in 2006.
The Lehigh Valley is supported by 10 institutions of higher learning and is home to 45,000 full- and part-time college students. Lehigh University is the predominant player in research and development in the area.
“We look at a region that is much larger than the valley, which extends from Pennsylvania into New Jersey,” says Ray Suhocki, president and CEO, Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. “We recognize the largest cluster of life sciences-related workers in the world is located in the area from northeast New Jersey down through Philadelphia toward Washington, D.C. We see ourselves as part of this life sciences community.”
Brains, Facilities and Monies
For medical device companies, the ability to tap into a world-class workforce and cutting-edge research institutions is vital. Barnstead International in Dubuque, Iowa, is a division of Apogent, which was acquired by Fisher Scientific in August. Barnstead International's 400-employee operation will remain in Dubuque. It manufactures a mix of lab equipment ranging from hot plates to furnaces and water purification systems.
Rick Dickinson, director, Greater Dubuque Development Corp., says Barnstead International finds the quality of the workforce, the level of education and productivity in the community to be outstanding. In 2003, the company consolidated its New Jersey and Arkansas facilities to Dubuque. A $60,000 Community Economic Betterment Account supported the company's nearly half-a- million-dollar investment in the project.
In the Buffalo-Niagara region, the number of science and engineering degrees granted in the area grabs the attention of medical device companies. The area ranks fourth in the nation for the numbers of these graduates it produces. The Buffalo School of Dentistry consistently ranks in the top five dental schools in the nation for its academic and research capabilities. And, in 2003, the University at Buffalo received more than $240 million in public and private research funding. What's more, nearly $300 million in public and private funds has been invested to build the life sciences infrastructure and facilities.
Companies need space to site to and expand at when the time is right to do so. In addition to an existing science park in New Haven, Conn., the knowledge corridor has several projects occurring that will meet the needs of medical device companies.
“In East Hartford, thanks to federal funding through our congressman, we will have the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, which will encompass four incubators, with one focused on medical devices,” says Terri Wilson, assistant executive director, BEACON.
Wilson says the idea of the center is to create a space with equipment that can be used by people who want to test new products but don't want to buy the expensive equipment.
“In addition, the University of Connecticut's incubator system supports innovative technology,” says Sandra Johnson, vice president and business development officer, MetroHartford Alliance. “In New Briton, Central Connecticut State University has a technology center for companies to tap into.”
“Boston has about 1,000 available acres located at the South Boston Waterfront, a former industrial port, which is adjacent to the city's financial district,” says Dave McLaughlin, marketing manager, Boston Redevelopment Authority. He says the site is located five minutes from the airport, downtown, mass transit and highways.
The Boston Marine Industrial Park, located at the South Boston Waterfront, is home to medical device manufacturing companies, including Immunetics. “The Boston Redevelopment Authority helped fund the build out of the lab space for the company,” Comiso says. “The CEO raves about the space and the accessibility to transportation. The company is also located in our Federal Empowerment Zone.”
“Much of Boston falls into the Empowerment Zone,” McLaughlin says. He says the zone encompasses most of the city's industrial zoned areas. “The most striking aspect of the program is the $3,000 per employee, per year wage credit from the federal government for each employee who lives in the zone.”
When Olympus America announced that it would relocate its headquarters and distribution operation from Long Island, N.Y., to Upper Saucon Township, Pa., in the Lehigh Valley, it sited in a Keystone Opportunity Zone.
The electronics and health care company will be able to take advantage of the zone's benefits, which include state and local tax abatements. To support the project, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will put up $10 million to conduct road improvements.
For medical device companies, clustering paves the road to innovation. Look for areas with world-class education and research institutions with the infrastructure (buildings and financial assistance packages) to support your endeavors in developing life saving and therapeutic products.
For complete details on the organizations and regions included in this article visit:
Biomedical Engineering Alliance and Consortium, www.beaconalliance.org
Boston Redevelopment Authority, www.ci.boston.ma.us/bra
Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, www.buffaloniagara.org
Greater Dubuque (Iowa) Development Corp., www.greaterdubuque.org
Lehigh Valley (Pa.) Economic Development Corp., www.lehighvalley.org
LifeTech Boston, www.lifetechboston.com
Metro Hartford Alliance, www.metrohartford.com
Top States for Medical Device Manufacturing
Based on number of establishments
New Branches
1. California
2. Texas
3. Pennsylvania
4. Ohio
5. Missouri
6. Florida
7. Massachusetts
8. New Jersey
9. Washington
10. Minnesota
Startups
1. California
2. Texas
3. Florida
4. Illinois
5. New York
6. Washington
7. Massachusetts
8. Ohio
9. Minnesota
10. Colorado (tie)
10. Michigan (tie)
Data include the following SICs:
2835 Diagnostic substances
2836 Biological products, except diagnostics
3823 Process control instruments
3824 Fluid meters and counting devices
3825 Instruments to measure electricity
3841 Surgical and medical instruments
3842 Surgical appliances and supplies
3843 Dental equipment and supplies
3844 X-ray apparatus and tubes
3845 Electromedical equipment
Source: Since 1990, BizMiner has built its reputation on quality research in the fields of economic and business development. The company tracks more than 11 million U.S. businesses annually, developing vitality benchmarks for more than 18,000 lines of business and every U.S. county, MSA and state.
Measures include business retention, entrepreneurial activity, new branch attraction, business relocation trends and concentrations of high-growth firms.
Visit
www.bizminer.com for access to more than 1 million local and national marketing research and financial analysis reports.
