Out of 26 million Texans, you may have an idea to change the world. You may have had several ideas to change the world. But only a tiny minority of you pushed through the U.S. Patent office from application to successful patent. We've seen Texans change the world many times over. Jack Kilby did it with Texas Instruments in 1958 with the integrated circuit, causing the start of the digital revolution, which, in part, is why you can read these words over your electronic device.
Over the last few years, Texas Business has brought its feature: Texas Business Patent of the Day. This list is of the ones that were either extremely clever, odd or strange. One thing becomes apparent from these patents and the patent that runs daily in Texas Business—Texans have a unique mind set.
Though the history of the Corn Dog is disputed, the State Fair of Texas claims to have introduced the Corny Dog sometime between 1938 and 1942. As a paean to that invention that now sits in the freezer section of every grocery store in the southwest, here are the fried foods the State Fair of Texas has introduced, or tried to introduce, in the last seven years.
Dead Texas musicians live on every time you hear their songs. Their songs play everywhere, so the dead Texas musicians appear to be immortal. Here's the short list.
Don't get caught up with John Wayne religion. For one thing, he's not Texan. He's in some fine movies involving Texas, most notably The Searchers, but none of his movies can make the best cut of Texas movies. Here's the short list.
Unsung Texas Business Journalists Mention that one is a reporter, and there's a spark of interest. Mention that one is a business news reporter, and watch the eyes glaze over. Except to the players, business and economic journalists are unappreciated. While many wish to become sports reporters when they grow up, most do not realize that business journalists cover the Real Game. Mention that reporter covers business, and watch the eyes glaze over. A toast to these below on the short list and the numerous unnamed ones slogging away. Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Best Texas Mexican Food: The Short List No, we're not going to debate the difference between Tex-Mex, Mex-Tex, Mexican and Texican food. Just know these establishments are the pinnacle of Texas Mexican fare. No brag, just fact. Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Best Texas Burgers Texas Burgers. . While a hamburger is merely sustenance and gratification for a meal, the memory a good Texas burger can give rise to Homeric odes. The short list. Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas System board of regents recently considered a $334 million plan to build a medical school at The University of Texas at Austin.
Texas Business reports: The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents authorized the execution of a contract to create a family medicine residency program with Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) and DeTar Healthcare System in Victoria, Texas.
Texas Business reports: EL PASO—The Texas Institute for Robotic Surgery at Las Palmas Medical Center recently became one of the first facilities in the nation to perform a hysterectomy using a new single-site platform for robotic surgery.
Researchers at The University of Texas are developing technology that may soon allow individuals to be tested for a number of infections and diseases without having to make a trip to the doctor’s office.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—The Episcopal Diocese of Texas approved today a Definitive Agreement for the transfer of St. Luke's Episcopal Health System to Catholic Health Initiatives, a nationally recognized health care system.
Texas Business reports: A San Antonio firm won a $20.3 million contract to provide military medical services, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—A new chair developed by engineering students at Rice University will make radiation therapy sessions for cancer patients more comfortable and more effective.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—The Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital and The Methodist Hospital received a $11.3 million renewal grant from the National Institutes of Health to advance the development of more effective and less toxic targeted T cell therapies for children and adults with cancer.
Texas Business reports: A Fort Worth firm won a $23.4 million contract to supply pharmaceutticals to the U.S. military, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Texas Business reports: EL PASO—The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District awarded a $648 million contract January 29 to Clark McCarthy Healthcare Partners II for the construction of the Fort Bliss Replacement Hospital.
Texas Business reports: ROUND ROCK, Texas—Scott & White Healthcare plans to open an emergency hospital at 900 E. Whitestone Boulevard in Cedar Park on February 27.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—UHC, an alliance of 119 academic medical centers and 283 of their affiliated hospital organizations, announces that Harris Health System of Harris County, Texas, has become UHC's newest member.
Texas Business reports: The state of Texas plans to give $3.15 million to health care start-up companies. The money will be funneled through the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (TETF) to three early stage companies that are developing technologies to help treat and diagnose diabetes and heart failure.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Elekta and Royal Philips Electronics announced that The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center signed an agreement to join a research group to advance the development of an image-guided treatment technology for cancer care.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation plans to give $50 million to establish the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—A five-year, $1.75 million grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation was awarded to Texas Children’s Cancer Center to establish the Developmental Therapeutics Center of Excellence.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON— Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited, a specialty hospital management solution provider and operator of the largest network of radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centers in China, closed the acquisition of 19.98% of indirect ownership of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Proton Therapy Center (MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center).
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN— XBiotech, a privately held biotechnology company, has been granted Fast Track designation by the FDA for its therapeutic monoclonal antibody MABp1 (CV-18C3) as a treatment to reduce the need for re-intervention after superficial femoral artery (SFA) revascularization.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—The Nora’s Gift Foundation selected Satterfield & Pontikes Construction (S&P) to build the new Nora’s Home hospitality facility near the Texas Medical Center in Houston.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON – Lawrence T. Tyler, 40, has been indicted on charges of health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud, United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced.
To see the federal government’s inconsistent oversight of nursing homes, one needs only to look at what happened after two residents died — one in Texas, one in South Carolina.
Full Story » Charles Ornstein and Lena Groeger for Pro Publica
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—A painstaking effort to create a biocompatible patch to heal infant hearts is paying off at Rice University and Texas Children's Hospital.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS and TEMPLE, Texas—The boards of Baylor Health Care System and Scott & White Healthcare have approved the signing of an agreement of intent to combine the strengths of their two health systems to create a $7.7 billion organization with the vision and resources to offer its patients continued exceptional care while creating a model system for an industry undergoing fundamental transformation.
Texas Business reports: WOONSOCKET, R.I. and SULPHUR SPRINGS, Texas—CVS/pharmacy and Medicine Chest Pharmacy announced CVS will acquire 19 Medicine Chest drug stores in Texas during the last weekend of December.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—MedSpring Urgent Care, a provider of quality urgent health care, announced the opening of a new center located at 6501 South Fry Road, at the southeast corner of South Fry Road and Grand Parkway, near the planned Whole Foods Market.
Texas Business reports: CORPUS CHRISTI – A state district court in Nueces County issued a permanent injunction prohibiting Silverio Salinas, owner of Corpus Christi-based Silverio Salinas Inc. d/b/a Neohealth Inc., Natural Doctor Center, and Maya Wellness Center from selling unauthorized supplements:
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Beginning in December 2012, all newborns in the state of Texas will be screened for Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder (SCID) as part of the standard newborn screening panel which already screens for 28 additional disorders. In correlation with this new screening, Texas Children's Hospital opened Newborn Primary Immunodeficiency Disorder (PIDD) Screening Clinic which will immediately see referred newborns who have tested positive for SCID and other PIDDs to limit mortality rates through early diagnosis and treatment.
Texas Business reports: FORT WORTH—Smith & Nephew, a U.K.-based medical technology business, signed an agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Healthpoint Biotherapeutics for $782 million in cash.
Texas Business reports: Smart scaffolding that can guide cells, proteins and small-molecule drugs to make new tissue and repair damage inside the body is in development at Rice University with support from the National Institutes of Health.
Texas Business reports: A San Antonio firm won a $30.1 million contract for managing sterile conditions at military hospitals, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Texas Business reports: WACO—Baylor University won two new federal grants for research on Gulf War illness, the complex medical condition that affects veterans of the 1991 war.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN— Harden Healthcare, a Texas-based senior healthcare services provider with operations in 14 states, announced its subsidiary, Hospice Care of Kansas, will change its name to Harden Hospice Kansas effective immediately.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—XBiotech, a privately held biotechnology company, announced positive interim analysis results today from a Phase II study using a True Human monoclonal antibody (MABp1) in patients with type 2 diabetes.
Texas Business reports: TEMPLE, Texas—Walmart plans to supply employees as possible candidates for surgery to Scott & White under a partnership formed between Scott & White Healthcare and Walmart.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—A Dallas-area home health services company owner admitted his role in a $374 million home health fraud scheme in which he and others conspired to bill Medicare for unnecessary services that were never performed.
Texas Business reports: A San Antonio firm won an $88 million contract to build a health care facility for the military, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
Texas Business reports: A scientist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler won $1.2 million federal grant to investigate ways to control the inflammation involved in a life-threatening illness called septic shock.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—What comes naturally to most people – to think and then do – is difficult for stroke patients who have lost the full use of their limbs. New research by Rice University, the University of Houston (UH) and TIRR Memorial Hermann aims to help victims recover that ability to the fullest extent possible with a $1.17 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the President’s National Robotics Initiative (NRI).
Texas Business reports: Health care services have always been in high demand, and costly. With the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, physician demand in the United States is expected to increase as health coverage is extended to more Americans.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital have been awarded more than $880,000 for two grants from The International Rett Syndrome Foundation to study therapeutic options for Rett syndrome.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) awarded $48.2 million in new grants to investigators at UT Southwestern Medical Center to support cancer-related projects and to recruit pre-eminent cancer researchers.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Rice University’s low-cost, student-designed device that helps newborns in respiratory distress is one of three projects nominated this month to receive a grant of up to $2 million from the Saving Lives at Birth partners to speed deployment of the technology in Malawi in southern Africa.
Texas Business reports: Extend Health, operator of the nation's largest private Medicare exchange, today opened its second Richardson service center at 1122 Alma Rd. in the Richardson Telecom Corridor, where it will hire an additional 200 benefit advisors and customer care representatives. This brings the total number of jobs Extend Health is bringing to Richardson to more than 500 in two new service centers.
Cardiac Arrest: Hospital Refuses to Give Widow her Husband’s Heart After more than eight years, Linda Carswell finally has proof: According to photographs submitted as evidence at a recent court hearing, her husband's heart sits in a locker in the morgue of St. Joseph Medical Center in Houston, stored in two plastic tubs. Full Story » Marshall Allen for Pro Publica
Texas Business reports: A medical technology consortium focused on moving innovation to the marketplace awarded more than $600,000 in a third round of grants to Dallas-Fort Worth area researchers in critical health care fields.
Texas Business reports: UT Arlington researchers won a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant to study a new model for how motor proteins behave in the body.
Texas Business reports: THE WOODLANDS—Pernix Therapeutics Holdings Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Great Southern Laboratories, a privately-held pharmaceutical contract manufacturing company located in Houston.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Texas Children's Cancer Center opened Fayez Sarofim Lymphoma Center, the first and only center in the world dedicated specifically to the research, care and treatment of children with lymphoma.
Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION—The Texas A&M System won a contract to develop one of three U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing.
Texas Business reports: MISSION VIEJO, Calif—The Ensign Group Inc., the parent company of the Ensign group of skilled nursing, rehabilitative care services, hospice care, assisted living and urgent care companies, acquired Paris Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, a 150-bed skilled nursing facility located in Paris, Texas.
Texas Business reports: PAMPA—Prime Healthcare Services, based in Ontario, Calif., completed a transaction to acquire Pampa Regional Medical Center, located in Pampa, Texas, from Signature Hospital Corporation, based in Houston.
AUSTIN — Leonardo da Vinci toiled over human and animal bodies 700 years ago, slowly dissecting and analyzing them, with now-antiquated methods he pioneered to advance medical understanding. Today, Leonardo’s name is synonymous with a cutting-edge technology, the da Vinci robotic surgery system, that is fast-forwarding surgical procedures and how young doctors learn about medicine.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are teaming up to develop medication to treat alcoholism and drug addiction that could target individual genes or brain signaling systems.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine will receive up to $6.2 million over five years from the National Institute Of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to develop a vaccine for severe acute respiratory syndrome, commonly called SARS.
Texas Business reports: LEWISVILLE—Orthofix International NV completed the divestiture of its Sports Medicine Business Unit, Breg Inc., to Water Street Healthcare Partners, a strategic private equity firm focused exclusively on the health care industry.
After 43 years in the hunt, George Bittner, professor of neurobiology at the University of Texas at Austin, believes he’s on the verge of a major breakthrough in nerve repair that could potentially cure paralysis in humans.
Full Story » By Jordan Humphreys For Reporting Texas
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine have been awarded more than $5 million from Susan G. Komen for the Cure for three new breast cancer research grants, including a Komen Promise Grant.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Instead of building a better mousetrap, a team of Rice University freshmen took a mousetrap and built a better way to treat dehydration among children in the developing world.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Pulmotect Inc., a Houston-based biotechnology company, received $7.1 million from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to advance its product, PUL-042, which offers the promise of better protecting patients receiving chemotherapy from infection, allowing for significantly higher treatment success.
Texas Business reports: University of Texas at Arlington researchers have obtained a patent for a device aimed at saving babies’ lives through improved and rapid detection of breathing problems including Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—Patients having psychiatric emergencies wait 11.5 hours in the emergency department, and those who are older, uninsured or intoxicated wait even longer, according to a study published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Patient and Practice-Related Determinants of Emergency Department Length of Stay for Patients with Psychiatric Illness.
Texas Business reports: OKLAHOMA CITY & AUSTIN, Texas—Caisson Biotech LLC, a biopharmaceutical company with a patented heparosan-based drug delivery technology, entered into a development and license agreement with Denmark's Novo Nordisk A/S, a provider of diabetes care.
Texas Business reports: BRYAN, Texas—American Anesthesiology, a division of MEDNAX Inc., acquired Brazos Anesthesiology Associates (BAA), a physician group practice based in Bryan, Texas that provides anesthesia services, including cardiac, pediatric, obstetric, regional anesthesia and chronic pain management, throughout the Brazos Valley.
Texas Business reports: ARLINGTON, Texas and ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. — Huguley Memorial Medical Center in south Fort Worth is becoming part of the Texas Health Resources health system.
Texas Business reports: SAN ANTONIO—The University of Texas at San Antonio, the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, Southwest Research Institute and Texas Biomed jointly established the San Antonio Vaccine Development Center, a unique partnership that will result in the creation of new vaccines to treat infectious diseases and approaches for quicker and more effective vaccine development.
Texas Business reports: LEWISVILLE—Orthofix International NV reached an agreement under which Water Street Healthcare Partners, a strategic private equity firm focused on the health care industry, will acquire Orthofix's Sports Medicine Business Unit, which operates as Breg Inc.
Texas Business reports: A team of Rice University students has invented a device they hope will make the process of correcting bone deformities safer and easier for children who currently have to manually turn a screw to lengthen their limb four times a day.
Texas Business reports: A University of Texas at Arlington multi-disciplinary team received a $360,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build artificial nanopores made of silicon that can detect “bad molecules” as a very early indication of cancer and other diseases.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Life Technologies Corporation’s multiple Ion Proton Sequencers have been installed and are now operating at the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—UT Southwestern Medical Center will name its University Hospital, now under construction, for Texas Gov. William P. Clements Jr., in recognition of his 2009 gift of $100 million to the Southwestern Medical Foundation, the largest single gift for the benefit of UT Southwestern in the institution’s history.
Texas Business reports: A new study by the Department of Health Information Management at Texas State University-San Marcos reveals a far greater need for Health Information Technology (HIT) workers in Texas than previously anticipated.
Texas Business reports: The Austin National Guard Burea awarded a $20 million contract to a Virginia firm for military mobile dental and medical services.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Undergraduate students at Rice University have come up with what they hope will prove to be a better and safer version of cervical collars to stabilize the heads and necks of accident victims.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Asuragen Inc .received notice of a $6.8 million commercialization award to pursue Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) applications from the state of Texas through the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN--A University of Texas at Austin professor and his research collaborators have been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to conduct research that will significantly increase knowledge about artificial heart valves and lead to the development of valves that are more durable and dependable than those currently used in heart treatment.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Physicians and patients in Brazil now will have access to advanced genetic testing technologies through a new partnership between Baylor College of Medicine’s Medical Genetics Laboratory and DASA, a major, Brazil-based medical diagnostic laboratory that serves as the largest medical reference lab in Latin America and is the fourth largest provider of diagnostic services in the world.
Texas Business reports: ADDISON—ULURU Inc. received an Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods Certificate from the Therapeutic Goods Administration to market the drug Altrazeal in Australia.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—Children’s Medical Center is partnering with UT Southwestern Medical Center to establish a $150 million pediatric research institute.
Texas Business reports: The University of Texas at El Paso’s School of Nursing has been awarded nearly $4 million from the U.S. Department of Labor to accelerate the training of future registered nurses and address the nursing shortage in Texas.
Texas Business reports: FORT WORTH—Wound Management Technologies Inc., an emerging innovator in advanced wound care solutions, sold its wholly-owned subsidiary, Secure eHealth LLC to two entities that previously financed the acquisition of Secure eHealth by WMTI in January 2010.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—University of Texas at Austin researchers have demonstrated a new and more effective method for regrowing blood vessels in the heart and limbs — a research advancement that could have major implications for how health care treats heart disease, the leading cause of death in the Western world.
Texas Business reports: TEMPLE—Scott & White Healthcare today announced long-time supporters Elizabeth and Drayton McLane Jr. made the largest gift in the 115-year history of Scott & White to benefit its Children's Hospital.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—UT Southwestern Medical Center installed a new system to deliver extremely precise and individualized radiation treatment, assuring that cancer patients in the region have access to the latest advances in radiation oncology.
Texas Business reports: HANOVER, Md.—Conmed Healthcare Management Inc., it has purchased the assets of Panhandle Correctional Care, Inc., a Texas Corporation, including its three medical staffing contracts in the Texas panhandle.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—University General Health System Inc., a diversified, integrated multi-specialty health delivery system, finalized the acquisition of Sybaris Group LLC, a luxury hospitality service provider and facilities management company headquartered in Houston.
Texas Business reports: SAN ANTONIO—Mission Pharmacal Company formed Alamo Pharma Services, which will provide pharmaceutical sales teams with operational and human resources support.
Texas Business reports: ADDISON—ULURU Inc. extended the previously announced European license for Altrazeal to include the Middle East and North Africa.
Texas Business reports: Two Texas firms will share a $49 million military health care contract with a Colorado firm and a Georgia company, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
Texas Business reports: BRYAN—Skanska USA Building and BOKA Powell LLC completed a 130,000-square-foot, clinical building on the Texas A&M Health Science Center Bryan campus.
Texas Business reports: SAN ANTONIO—InGenesis Inc., of San Antonio, won a Clinical Acquisition Support Services (CLASS) contract by the U.S. Air Force.
Texas Business reports: SHELTON, Conn—iMedX Inc., a healthcare software and services company, completed the acquisition of assets from Abacus Transcriptions Inc.
Texas Business reports: VHGI Holdings Inc. plans to distribute to the shareholders of VHGI Holdings all of its ownership interest in Medical Office Software, Inc., a Florida corporation (MOS) which will result in MOS being a separately traded publicly-held company.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Vermillion Inc., a molecular diagnostics company, has completed the purchase of substantially all of the assets associated with the ovarian cancer diagnostics business of Correlogic Systems Inc. for $435,000 in cash.
Texas Business reports: Rice University will receive a Point-of-Care Diagnostics grant through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health.
“Your husband is dead,” the doctor told Linda Carswell.
This was not supposed to happen. Jerry Carswell had been admitted to Christus St. Catherine Hospital in Katy, Texas, with kidney stones. The previous night, he’d been walking around his room, talking about basketball and the upcoming presidential election with his son, Jordan. The plan was for the 61-year-old to be discharged that morning.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—A University of Texas at Austin engineering professor and a cardiologist from UT Medicine San Antonio received a $300,000 award to develop a new imaging technique with the potential to predict, or even prevent, heart attacks.
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—LDR, a privately held medical device company and a provider of zero-profile technology for both non-fusion and fusion spine applications, moved into a new, larger office facility.
Texas Business reports: FORT WORTH—The state is investing $450,000 through the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) in Ferris Mfg. Corp., which will invest $5.5 million in capital expenditures in a new headquarters office and medical product manufacturing and distribution center in Fort Worth.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—UT Southwestern Medical Center and the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru signed a five-year affiliation agreement that establishes an exchange program for medical students and related educational opportunities.
Texas Business reports: Academic and government leaders announced today the establishment of a major new research institute at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center that will blend the best attributes of academic and industrial research to identify and validate new cancer targets, convert such scientific knowledge into new cancer drugs, and advance these novel agents into innovative clinical trials.
Texas Business reports: Universal Health Services Inc. will buy certain assets of Knapp Medical Center located in Weslaco, Texas including a 226-bed acute-care hospital, the Knapp Surgery Center, Mid Valley Physician Association (PHO), Knapp Medical Group and various other real estate assets.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—LifeCare Hospitals of Dallas, a wholly owned subsidiary of LifeCare Holdings Inc., completed the acquisition of selected assets of Vibra Specialty Hospital of Dallas and successfully relocated its operations to Vibra's location in the Dallas Medical District.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—LIG Assets Inc. entered into the senior care industry as a developer through a partially owned subsidiary, World SeniorCare Services Inc.
Texas Business reports: IRVING—Safecor Health, a provider of pharmaceutical repackaging services, finalized a one-year extension to their single-source contract award with Irving’s Novation for unit dose repackaging and bar coding services.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON & AUSTIN—Leonardo Biosystems Inc. and NanoMedical Systems Inc. (NMS), two drug delivery companies, signed a development contract in which NMS will develop and establish a commercial process to manufacture nanoporous silicon particles for Leonardo's multi-stage drug delivery system.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—Vibra Healthcare, a national operator of specialty hospitals and outpatient physical therapy centers, will open a long term acute care hospital (LTACH) in DeSoto, Texas.
Texas Business reports: With the Hispanic population in the United States expected to nearly triple by 2050, a Baylor University linguist has developed a course tailored to meet the crucial need for medical professionals to cross language and cultural barriers.
Texas Business reports: King Hussein Cancer Center (KHCC) and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center signed a Sister Institution agreement in Amman, Jordan.
Texas Business reports: Changzhan Gu, a Texas Tech University doctoral student from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has set out to level the playing field.
Texas Business reports: Rainbow Coral Corp. (RBCC) established the headquarters of its new biotechnology division--Rainbow BioSciences LLC--in Houston, home of the world's largest medical complex.
Texas Business reports: Jordan Health Services, a Texas-based provider of home health services to Medicaid and/or Medicare eligible patients, combined with CIMA Hospice, a provider of hospice services with four locations serving Southwestern Texas markets.
Texas Business reports: The military is offiering credit monitoring and restoration actions to almost five million personal identification files were breached.
Texas Business reports: LEWISVILLE—Orthofix International launched the full market release of Collage Osteoconductive Scaffold, a new bone graft substitute, for use in spine and orthopedic indications.
Texas Business reports: An immuno- and growth-suppressant drug used to prevent rejection in human organ transplants and to treat some forms of cancer has proven effective in suppressing seizures in mice when used intermittently, says a Baylor University neuroscientist who contributed to research at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Vaccine development is an important component of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development have several vaccines in different stages of development.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—The North American Development Bank (NADB) and the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) signed a letter agreement with the State of Chihuahua to support the implementation of a pilot solar energy project in the city of Chihuahua.
Hogg Foundation Awards $1.6 Million in Mental Health Workforce Development Grants Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at The University of Texas at Austin has selected three grant sites for a $1.6 million initiative to create internships for doctoral psychology students that will help alleviate mental health workforce shortages in Texas.Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—With a $2.25 million five-year grant, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital have been named one of the newest core centers of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Pediatric Heart Network, which was established in 2001 to improve outcomes and quality of life of children with heart disease. The NHLBI is one of the National Institutes of Health.
UT Southwestern and University of Cape Town announce five-year affiliation agreement Texas Business reports DALLAS--UT Southwestern Medical Center and the faculty of health sciences of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, signed a five-year affiliation agreement today to collaborate on faculty and student exchanges, joint research and training activities and other educational opportunities.Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Owner of Houston Health Care Company Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for Medicare Fraud Texas Business reports: The owner and operator of a Houston durable medical equipment (DME) company was sentenced earlier this week in Houston federal court to 33 months in prison for his role in a Medicare fraud scheme, announced the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: LTC Properties Inc. acquired, in a sale-lease back transaction, a skilled nursing property built in 2005 with 196 licensed beds in Pasadena, Texas, for a purchase price of $15,500,000. Additionally, the company bought a vacant parcel of land in Amarillo, for a purchase price of $844,000 and entered into a commitment, in an amount not to exceed $8,250,000, to fund the construction of a 120-bed licensed skilled nursing property.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Baylor College of Medicine has been selected as one of eight institutions across the nation to develop neuroscience education programs for students and their teachers through a grant awarded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Texas Business reports: A San Antonio firm won an $80.5 million contract to build a health care center at an air force base, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
Texas Business reports: TEMPLE—Children’s Hospital at Scott & White, the newest pediatric hospital in the state and the only stand-alone facility between Dallas and Austin, opened its new 148,000-square-foot facility.
UT Southwestern launches hand transplant program Texas Business reports: DALLAS—A team of surgeons at UT Southwestern Medical Center expects to perform the first hand transplant in North Texas within a year, making the institution just the sixth hospital in the U.S. to perform the rare and intricate surgery.Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—The three-dimensional structure of a site on an influenza B virus protein that suppresses human defenses to infection has been determined by researchers at Rutgers University and The University of Texas at Austin.
Texas Business reports: ORCHARD—Oxygen Orchard founded the Biomedical Foundation, a non-profit organization which will raise funds for clinical testing, will act as the repository for oxygen research, past, present and future, and will distribute data to medical professionals as well as to the public.
Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Baylor College of Medicine received a $25 million gift from an anonymous donor to establish the Drs. Beth K. and Stuart C. Yudofsky Division of Neuropsychiatry in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at BCM.
Texas Business reports: EL PASO—Students at The University of Texas at El Paso who want to become doctors soon will have access to a new medical education model.
Texas Business reports: GRAPEVINE, Texas—IntegraCare Holdings Inc., a provider of home health, hospice and community services, finished its acquisition of Outreach Health Service’s Medicare Services (OMS) business.
Texas Business reports: ARLINGTON - A UT Arlington microbiologist developing a treatment for one of the most widespread hospital infections in the U.S. has been awarded $1.9 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine.
Texas Business Patent Of The Day: Two Houston-area men invented a device for imaging feedback from parts of a patient’s brain for treating neurological disorders. Steven E. Maschino of Seabrook and William R. Buras of Friendswood received U.S. Patent 7,974,697 for “Medical imaging feedback for an implantable medical device.”
Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Convergen LifeSciences, Inc. announced that another patent has been awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office jointly to The University of Texas System Board of Regents and The Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Texas Business reports: Houston—A $486,000, three-year award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation will help. Christian P. Schaaf, a Baylor College of Medicine physician-scientist with the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital, research new approaches to treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders.
Texas Business reports:Over the next five years, The University of Texas at San Antonio is slated to receive $2.4 million in funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to continue its MARC research training program, which supports underrepresented and disadvantaged UTSA undergraduates majoring in biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, statistics or engineering. UTSA will use the funding to partially support 12 students each year through 2016.
Texas Business reports: TEMPLE—Texas Children's Hospital and Scott & White Healthcare signed a 20-year affiliation agreement enhancing pediatric care across Central Texas and extending to the metropolitan Houston area.
Texas Business reports: Texas Emerging Technology Fund (TETF) awarded $1 million to Vital Art and Science Inc. (VAS) for the development of a handheld application capable of diagnosing and monitoring age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.
Texas Business reports: DALLAS—The Plastic Surgery Channel today announced the launch of ThePlasticSurgeryChannel.com, a new video-based source of information about aspects of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery from board-certified plastic surgeons.
UTSA Receives $4.6 million DOD Grant To Create Center of Excellence in Infection Genomics Texas Business reports: SAN ANTONIO—The South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases (STCEID) at The University of Texas at San Antonio will receive $4.6 million over the next five years from the U.S. Department of Defense Army Research Office to establish a Center of Excellence in Infection Genomics (CEIG).Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Leaders of Texas Children's Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine and the Sabin Vaccine Institute sign an agreement today for the recruitment of Dr. Peter Hotez and the relocation of the Sabin vaccine development program to Texas Children's and BCM.
Baylor College of Medicine To Establish National Tropical Medicine School Texas Business reports: Houston—Leaders of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital today announced an agreement to move Sabin's vaccine development program to Texas Children's and BCM as part of the recruitment of neglected diseases expert Peter Hotez.Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: Austin—Rules-Based Medicine (RBM), a provider of biomarker testing services, bought the intellectual property assets from Satoris Inc. RBM itself has signed an agreement to be bought by a Utah firm.
Texas Business reports: Houston—Baylor College of Medicine announced the first major project of its new Center for Globalization, a plan to partner with a leading health care provider in India in an academic affiliation.
Texas Business reports: Arlington—A natural additive used to make foam in soft drinks also may help prevent the sometimes-deadly rotavirus infection in children or reduce its severity, a University of Texas at Arlington biology professor says in a research paper to be published in June.
Saudi Arabia Sales Agreement Signed by Fort Worth Company; $500K First-Year Sales Commitment Texas Business reports: Fort Worth—Wound Management Technologies Inc., a provider of wound care solutions, announced that Pharma Tech International (PTI), a joint venture of its subsidiary BioPharma Management Technologies, signed an annual $500,000 minimum sales agreement with Cure Hands, a company of international trade based in Saudi Arabia.Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: Rice University bioengineering students have modified a child-size training mannequin to give medical students hands-on pediatric experience so that real patients can be spared further stress and pain.
Texas Business reports: Austin—Vermillion Inc., a molecular diagnostics company, announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a notice of allowance for a patent entitled “Panel of Biomarkers for Peripheral Artery Disease” to the company.
Texas Business reports: Three San Antonio firms and a Hawaii firm won a share of the right to bid for potentially $99 million in orders for military dental services, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
Texas Business reports: Corpus Christi—The Texas Attorney General’s office charged Silverio Salinas of Corpus Christi with falsely claiming to be a medical doctor licensed in Texas.
Two San Antonio Firms Share In Military Dental Contract Texas Business reports: Two San Antonio firms are sharing contracts worth potentially $99.5 million with two other firms to provide dental services to be provided at a Navy medical center and associated clinics, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: Two San Antonio firms won a share of a $225 million potential contract work with four other firms to provide health care workers for a Navy medical center in California.
Texas Business reports: As companies scramble for a piece of the electronic health record market, Muenster Memorial Hospital in north Texas serving a bi-county area north of Denton selected Custom Software Systems' ChartSmart Electronic Medical Record as Muenster's EMR solution, Muenster chief executive Michael Kent said.
Texas Business reports: An Austin drug maker has developed a product to combat staph infection. Affinium Pharmaceuticals announced results of a new multiple ascending dose Phase I study of its novel, selective-spectrum, anti-staphylococcal agent, AFN-1252 in a novel oral formulation.
Members of Rice University's DefibTaskForce, clockwise from left, are Lisa Jiang, Justin Lin, Carl Nelson, Joanna Nathan and Brad Otto. Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University.
Texas Business reports: An invention by Rice University bioengineering students in collaboration with the Texas Heart Institute (THI) is geared toward giving immediate second chances to arrhythmia victims headed toward cardiac arrest.
Texas Business reports: Austin—John Zhang, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, has received nearly $1 million from the National Institute of Health's (NIH) National Cancer Institute for his research on early detection of cancer.
The past two decades have brought about a revival in midwifery, the practice supporting a natural approach to childbirth over traditional operating-room and hospital births.
Full Story » By Stephanie Bathurst of Reporting Texas
Texas Business reports: Siemens Financial Services Inc. (SFS Inc.), the U.S. unit of Siemens' Financial Services division, recently completed a $10.9 million real estate financing to support the development of a new San Antonio healthcare property by Mohr Health LLC.
Texas Business reports: Austin—A new low cost test for acute pancreatitis that gets results much faster than existing tests has been developed by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.
Texas Business reports: An Austin firm won a $13.1 million contract to provide hospital housekeeping in Indiana and Kentucky for Walter Reed Medical Center, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
Texas Business reports: Dallas—A device developed by UT Southwestern Medical Center surgeons stands to become widely adapted as a treatement for pelvic fractures.
Texas Business reports: Fifty-eight-year-old Stephanie Freeman became the first in the country to receive the latest in implantable cardiac rhythm device technology on March 30th.
Texas Business reports: Dallas—A UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher is one of five nationwide selected to receive a $600,000 Burroughs Wellcome Fund grant to investigate the biological mechanisms and causes of premature birth.
Texas Business reports: Fort Worth—Wound Management Technologies Inc., a provider of wound care products, received $150,000 in international orders for the firm’s line of CellerateRX powder and gel products.
Texas Business reports: Irving—Novation, a health care supply contracting company, added St. Jude Medical of St. Paul, Minnesota to its portfolio of agreements for Cardiac Rhythm Management products.
Texas Business reports: As companies scramble for market share of the electronic health record market, an Austin firm found a toehold as one of a dozen preferred vendors by an Arkansas agency.
Texas Business reports: Dallas—Kay Anne White, 45, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis to three years in federal prison following her guilty plea in January to one count of making false statements regarding health care matters, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas.
Texas Business reports: Hamlin Memorial Hospital plans to use a software electronic healthcare record (EHR) product to help improve care and meet governmental healthcare requirements.
Texas Business reports: Houston—Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) announced the creation of the Texas Children's Center for Global Health and the appointment of physician-scientist Russell E. Ware as director.
Texas Business reports: A Katy firm is seeing potentially huge business from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex caused by the March 11 9.0 earthquake and following tsunami.
Texas Business reports: Ascension Orthopedics, Inc., a provider of PyroCarbon orthopedic devices, released the Titan Modular Shoulder Fracture Prosthesis.
Texas Business reports: The U.S. Air Force awarded a $5.6 million contract to an Arizona firm to provide medical technician services to Lackland Air Force Base on the west side of San Antonio.
Texas Business reports: Fort Hood—Even as the fight to control health care markets across Texas intensifies in the private sector, the U.S. Army plans to add three more clinics into the active competition in Central Texas in Killeen, Harker Heights and Copperas Cove.
Texas Business reports: AccentCare, a home healthcare company, is relocating its corporate headquarters from Irvine, California, to Dallas, a move that will create more than 100 new jobs in the Dallas area.
Texas Business reports: Southeast Texas Medical Associates (SETMA) is using IBM business analytics software to gain greater insight into hospital readmissions and data that will help identify causes and design interventions to prevent patients from having to return to the hospital soon after their discharge.
Texas Business reports Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, a downtown health resource for more than 35 years, opened a larger facility at The Shops at Houston Center.
Texas' Dell Services Renews Massachusetts Health Connector Authority Agreement Texas Business reports: Plano—The Massachusetts Health Connector Authority (Health Connector) and Dell Services negotiated a two-year extension of an agreement through which the healthcare technology solutions provider will deliver a range of enrollment, billing, website and customer experience services.Full Story » TexasBusiness.com
Texas Business reports: A San Antonio firm won a $19.3 million contract to provide mental health care workers for overseas counseling, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
Texas Business reports: McAllen—The owner of a McAllen-area durable medical equipment (DME) company and one of his employees have been indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with conspiracy, multiple counts of health care fraud, and aggravated identity theft for their alleged roles in a scheme to defraud Medicare and Medicaid through fraudulent billing for power wheelchairs and diabetic supplies, United States Attorney José Angel Moreno announced.
Texas Business reports:As part of the $9.4 million infrastructure contract to support the construction of the new Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center here, approximately five miles of “duct banks” are being dug beneath the grounds of the existing hospital parking area to distribute 3,500 telephones lines and fiber optic cables.
Texas Business reports: Irving’s Novation, a health care supply contracting company, announced that, Medtronic Inc. has cancelled five contracts with Novation that cover cardiovascular and orthopedic products.
Texas Business reports: Fort Worth—Healthpoint launched of a new corporate identity featuring a new company name, Healthpoint Biotherapeutics, along with an updated brandmark and corporate tagline, “The Science of Healing”.
Texas Business reports: Dallas—Baylor Jack and Jane Hamilton Heart and Vascular Hospital announced that it implanted the first MRI-safe pacemaker in North Texas last week and the patient has fully recovered.
Texas Business reports: A Florida firm will receive $29.6 million addition to the 2007 $556 million contract to design and build the San Antonio Military Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
Texas Business reports: Austin’s Luminex Corporation teamed with Boston’s Partners HealthCare toward the discovery of novel biomarkers and development of clinical assays.
Texas Business reports: Healthpoint announced that its Hydrofera Blue® Bacteriostatic Dressing distribution agreement with Hydrofera LLC will not be extended.
DeDeSoto Physician Guilty in Health Care Fraud Scheme Texas Business reports: A 53-year-old DeSoto, Texas physician has pleaded guilty to federal health care fraud-related charges in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney John M. Bales.Full Story » Texas Business
Texas Business reports: HP won a 52-month services agreement with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to create a statewide Medicaid health information exchange.
The Texas News Scrawl is a handy reference to stories Texas Business recommends from other news sources. Some of the stories that Texas Business currently suggests include: America’s greatest threat: Unsafe work conditions; The West News proves the value of a great weekly newspaper in a community torn up with grief and chaos; Chinese investors checking out Texas, Austin; Texas makes bounce house operators carry liability coverage, but not plants like West Fertilizer; bSpaceX’s Grasshopper leaping to NM spaceport;American Airlines, US Airways to name post-merger leadership within weeks; Texas power cushion seen at lowest level in a decade; Media outlets reflect Houston's diversity; and more.
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