Kiger's Notebook

Rochester founder says Tenex is growing quickly

When pro basketball player Pau Gasol of the L.A. Lakers needed damaged tendons in his knee removed this week, his doctor opted for a noninvasive treatment developed by Mayo Clinic instead of the traditional surgery option.

Gasol now is one of about 5,000 patients that have been treated with Tenex Health Inc.'s TX1 instrument, since the firm took its specialty needle system to market at the start of 2012.

Dr. Jagi Gill, of Rochester, founded Tenex in 2009, and it received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2011. Since then it has quickly been gaining traction and is now listing "multi-millions" in sales.

"We moved past the 'Will it work?' and 'Can we make it?' stages. Now we are building a sales team and working a marketing message," Gill said.

Tenex now is selling the system to doctors. The firm has 12 sales representatives, and he hopes to grow that number to 40 by the third quarter of 2013.

Gill began his career in Mayo Clinic's Department of Neurology. He has since worked at Boston Scientific as well as a number of biotechnology start-ups.

Tenex's one-time use, disposable handpiece was developed and commercialized in collaboration with Mayo Clinic. Tenex licenses technology from Mayo Clinic and in turn, Mayo owns equity in Tenex.

"The folks at Mayo have been very helpful," he said.

The TX1 system uses ultrasound technology to treat damaged tendons or soft tissue in elbows, knees, ankles, feet and shoulders. Unlike surgery, patients can walk out after what is often a procedure no longer than 20 minutes.

"It is well-tolerated and safe as an injection," says Gill.

That and the quick recovery are making Tenex very popular with athletes, people with work-related injuries and patients who simply "want to have an active lifestyle."

Gasol is not the only celebrity who has discovered Tenex. TV and radio personality Ryan Seacrest has also has his elbow treated with the TX1 system.

At one point, Tenex looked at Rochester, nearby Elk Run and even Willmar, Minn., as possible locations for a manufacturing facility. In the end, the decision was made to acquire the California company that handled the early manufacturing on a contract basis.

So why not do the manufacturing in Rochester?

"The challenge that any company would have in going here is that there isn't a lot of experience in terms of engineering, manufacturing, production, quality systems," says Gill.

He explained that medical device hotspots, not only have a medical system or university for generating ideas, but also "They have an imbedded group of people that know how to turn on an infrastructure."

Tech columnist on Decline and Fall of IBM

I've pointed out the writings of well-known tech columnist Bob Cringely and his dire (and sometimes accurate) predictions about IBM.

As a long-time tech writer, he seems to have to pretty good grasp of how IBM has changed over the years. He has always been very critical of Big Blue's management, which he sees as creating profits at the expense of their employees instead creating of good technology.

Cringely's latest prediction is that IBM will withdraw its 401K contributions for its employees. They have already made some significant changes in that area, from shifting from making 401k contributions in every paycheck to doing it just once a year.

I wonder what local IBMers think about that. Is it possible? Could that be in the works?

The Decline and Fall of IBM is the headline of Cringely's latest column as well as the title of an e-book that is releasing soon.

Here's an excerpt from the column:

IBM is in trouble, you see, serious trouble caused primarily by executive corrosion from within. Not only did Big Blue miss its earnings target last quarter for the first time in years, if the rumors I am hearing are correct the company’s primary response will be to screw U.S. employees even more than they have already.

The rumor I’ve heard is that IBM, which not long ago changed its 401k contribution policy to push what had been a biweekly payment into an annual one right at the end of the year, may have decided this year (and in the future?) not to make any 401K contribution at all. Since IBM’s U.S. employees can divert up to eight percent of their gross compensation into the 401K and IBM has traditionally made a comparable matching payment, this possible change in compensation policy could save the company close to $1 billion.

In one sense one might ask what’s wrong with that? Companies have to do what they have to do in this economy and workers sometimes suffer. But for IBM it indicates the company is getting near the bottom of its bag of tricks for maintaining earnings growth toward that ambitious 2015 goal of $20 per share. Management seem to be down to three ideas to improve the numbers: 1) savage the 401K plan; 2) sell the low-end server business to Lenovo for a reported $2.5 billion, and; 3) expect a miracle called PureSystems.

 

 

 

Plug pulled on IBM's record breaking computer Roadrunner

IBM's record-breaking Roadrunner supercomputer was the fastest computer in the world when introduced five years ago.

But this week, it was retired and soon will be dismantled, surpassed by other machines in the fast-evolving world of supercomputers.

The Roadrunner, which owed much of its hybrid design and manufacture to Big Blue's Rochester campus, was the first machine to break the computer industry's "sound barrier" in 2008 by clocking a petaflop or one quadrillion calculations per second.

“We just all looked around and said, ‘We made it,’” stated Peter Keller, who was part of the Rochester manufacturing team that recorded that historic milestone on May 25, 2008.

The plug was pulled on the $121 million supercomputer on Easter Sunday at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

"Roadrunner, while I would not define it as strictly obsolete, it has been surpassed by newer technology," said Kevin Roark, of Los Alamos. "It's perfectly normal. …This is the natural progression."

Roadrunner's duties are being shifted over to Los Alamos' Cielo supercomputer, which is made by Seattle-based Cray Inc. Two years younger than Roadrunner, Roark describes it as faster, smaller, less expensive and more energy-efficient than its IBM predecessor.

Until it was shut down, Roadrunner ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week since being delivered to the laboratory via 25 trucks.

While it now is being experimented on as it waits to be dismantled and shredded, Roadrunner took Los Alamos' work on the United States' nuclear weapons stockpile to a new level.

"It has performed remarkably well. It has really helped us solve some fundamental problems that were essentially unsolvable before a computer of its speed," Roark said.

It wasn't just its speed that made Roadrunner so groundbreaking. The revolutionary hybrid design that coordinated the use of different types of computer chips, including Cell chips originally designed in Rochester to be used in Sony's PlayStation 3 video game system.

"Roadrunner was a truly pioneering idea," said Gary Grider, of Los Alamos' High Performance Computing Division, in a statement. "Roadrunner got everyone thinking in new ways about how to build and use a supercomputer."

Los Alamos teamed up with IBM to build Roadrunner from commercially available parts. They ended up with 278 refrigerator-size racks filled with two different types of processors, all linked together by 55 miles of fiber optic cable.

The supercomputer has been used over the last five years to model viruses and unseen parts of the universe, to better understand lasers and for nuclear weapons work. That includes simulations aimed at ensuring the safety and reliability of the nation's aging arsenal.

Roadrunner was the world's fastest computer for 18 months. At its peak, it was two times faster than Blue Gene/L, which was IBM’s star machine and the fastest computer in the world in 2007.

Its historic speed kept Roadrunner on the Top 500 Fastest Computers list, despite being outdated. It still ranked as 22nd fastest machine in the world in November.

IBM had four of the top 10 fastest computers on that November list, and all had roots in Rochester. Sequoia, a BlueGene/ Q, took the No. 2 spot behind Cray's Titan. Other BlueGenes — Miram JUQUEEN and Fermi — locked up the fourth, fifth and ninth spots.

Mayo Clinic extends deal with drug research lab

Here's some from a release I spotted this morning about Mayo Clinic signing an updated agreement with Sanford-Burnham, a research lab with locations in California and Florida.

By the way, the Sanford in Sanford-Burnham is T. Denny Sanford, who is also a big financial backer of Mayo Clinic.

Sanford-Burnham and Mayo Clinic signed a new collaborative agreement to build a pipeline of therapeutic drugs aimed at a variety of diseases with serious unmet medical needs.

-------------------------

The agreement combines Mayo Clinic’s clinically relevant targets with Sanford-Burnham’s discovery platform in a translational initiative aimed at advancing a portfolio of projects through the initial stages of drug discovery. The new agreement builds on a yearlong pilot phase and expands the number and scope of drug discovery projects derived from Mayo Clinic researchers that are being conducted at Sanford-Burnham.

 

“We’re looking forward to further engaging with our Mayo Clinic collaborators as we develop innovative screens to identify chemical compounds that modulate the activity of clinically relevant targets,” said Michael Jackson, vice president of drug discovery and development at Sanford-Burnham. “If successful, these compounds will form the basis of completely novel—‘first in class’—therapies for devastating diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, and others.”

 ------------------

“The Mayo Clinic–Sanford-Burnham collaboration provides an avenue for Mayo scientists to rapidly translate basic science discoveries into screening platforms that will enable new drug discovery, and a new paradigm in drug development,” said Andrew Badley, associate dean of research resources at Mayo Clinic.

S.E. Minn. is a pretty inventive area

Wrote the latest version of the annual IBM leads all other companies with U.S. patents story for today's paper.

I always enjoy the change to chat with some of IBM's master inventors and look at their patents. I often don't understand much, but I enjoy it. Heh.

This year I decided to see how many patents issued in 2012 included residents from area cities. I found some interesting stuff, including the fact a group of guys from Hormel in Austin were issued a new patent on a bacon bits making process on Christmas Day.

I hadn't look at these community numbers, since I wrote a big package in early 2010, where I determined that Rochester was the most inventive city inMinnesota and probably the U.S. (per 100,000 residents).

It is interesting to note that Rochester people had 488 patents issued to them in 2009, so the numbers have gone up considerably since then. I may need to take a run at this story again.

 

------------
This is a breakdown of how many patents issued in 2012 included at least one inventor from these southeastern Minnesota cities:

• Rochester — 652 patents

• Byron — 42 patents.

• Stewartville — 10 patents

• Austin — 75 patents

• Mantorville — 27 patents

• Zumbrota — 12 patents

• Pine Island — 36 patents

• Dodge Center — 10 patents

• Lewiston — 14 patents

• Oronoco — 38 patents

Oregon hospital says "No" to proton beam therapy, cites studies

This is some from an interesting story in The Oregonian by Nick Budnick. The context is, of course, that Mayo Clinic is building a proton beam center in downtwon Rochester as well as one in Arizona.

Gary Schwitzer, former Mayo Clinic executive, pointed out the article on the Healthnewsreview.org website. Schwitzer characterized the trend of hospitals building proton beam centers with the very evocative and provocative phrase -  a "medical arms race."

Here's some from Budnick's article:

In recent years, large medical centers around the country have been building massive proton therapy machines costing $100 million and up, marketing them to men with prostate cancer.

For now, Oregon Health & Science University won't be one of them, with officials saying the treatment's cost and continued debate over its benefit have caused them to scrap a push to build one here.

"All of us were interested in exploring it," said Tomasz Beer, deputy director of OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute. But as conventional radiation therapy has improved, "it's not clear today whether proton therapy offers a meaningful and substantial clinical advantage."

University officials have mulled the idea for some time, even hiring an outside consultant about two years ago. Plans to hire another consultant were dropped earlier this year, with officials instead inviting two experts to university leaders, Beer said. Officials made their final decision in the last month or so.

Though the technology is considered useful in some pediatric cancers, studies continue to question its benefit for adults. "It is a technology that for adult tumors may have some advantages but those advantages have not been proven in head to head studies," Beer said. Things could change as the therapy evolves, but "We felt that we couldn't really justify this sort of investment based on the promise that this technology offers as it stands today."

Proton therapy centers can be as big as a football field, but OHSU had been considering a smaller, more recent version that would have cost about $30 million.

The treatment costs significantly more than conventional radiation therapy. Supporters say the therapy offers fewer side effects, but that claim has been undermined by studies released this year, most recently in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Critics call proton therapy an example of profit-driven medicine gone awry.

Proton therapy center operators have received other bad news this year. The federal government recently announced that it will follow through on plans issued this summer to cut Medicare reimbursement for proton therapy by nearly a third. That means centers' per-patient revenue dropped from an estimated $36,000 to $25,000.

Calif. tech firm pulls plug on Med City facility

A California tech firm recently pulled out of Rochester, after having an development lab here since 2006.

PMC-Sierra, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor maker, recently closed down its more than 8,500-square-foot facility at 3555 Ninth St. N.W. It moved into that space in 2010 and had about 20 employees working there at that time.

It is not know exactly when the Med City location closed up shop or even exactly why it closed. PMC-Sierra responded to questions with a brief statement attributed to Ron May, director of corporate marketing communications.

"The PMC Rochester facility opened in 2006 and our Adaptec acquisition in 2010 facilitated ending the project for which the site was originally opened; relocation assistance to our Colorado Springs facility or severance and job search assistance was offered to all remaining engineering employees."

It is unclear how the $34 million purchase of the "channel storage" division of a company like Adaptec impacted the Rochester site. PMC-Sierra spent at least $250,000 in November 2010 to build out the Ninth Street facility. It acquired Adaptec seven months prior to that.

Prior to the 2010 move, PMC-Sierra's Med City location had previously been based at 3605 U.S. 52 North in what used to be called the IBM White Buildings.

When asked what was driving its expansion in Rochester two years ago, PMC-Sierra released this statement:

 "... A large pool of experienced and talented individuals who have the technical expertise to work on PMC’s semiconductor solutions."

It is worth noting that PMC-Sierra was collaborating with IBM at that time  on "a multi-core, multi-threaded RAID solution" at that time. The resulting maxRAID device was used in Big Blue's new System x EXA servers.

While many details are not known, it is clear that PMC-Sierra has followed in the footsteps of other technology firms like JDS Uniphase and Celestica. It has definitely pulled the plug on its presence in Rochester.

Growing tech firm is dialing up larger Rochester facility

Communication is key to getting almost anything done today, making reliable cellular signals very valuable for businesses and individuals.
At the cellular level, keeping people and machines connected is what WPS Antennas is all about.

Just as the cellular industry has exploded in the past decade, WPS has grown from a tiny Rochester business into a global operation with major Fortune 500 companies as customers.

Now WPS, which was formed in 2001, has outgrown its base in the Rochester Airport Business Park on the south side of the city.

WPS Chief Manager Bob Crowley and Marketing Manager Matt Larson are now taking their company north to a much larger facility at 3035 40th Ave. N.W. near Rochester Restaurant Supply in the West Circle Drive Industrial Park.

Mike Haley, of Braasch Commercial Real Estate, handled the deal.

"We're more than doubling our space," Larson syas. "We're essentially going from 2,600-square-feet up to 6,000 square feet."

That means the 10-employee firm will have more room to warehouse its cellular antennas, cabling and related equipment.

When WPS began in 2001, it carried less than 100 different antennas and parts to serve customers. That number has skyrocketed to more than 5,700.

While WPS is not adding staff, the expansion means the firm will be more efficient in designing and assembling customized antennas for its wide variety of clients.

"Right now, everyone is stacked on top of each other," Larson says.

WPS has already started its move. If everything goes as planned, Larson expects to be completely up and running in the new facility by the end of the month.

These aren't your father's TV antennas. WPS provides antenna systems for a national movie DVD vending machine firm plus all sorts of other vending machines that accept credit cards. Their systems can also be found in bank ATMs, cash registers, alarm systems and many other everyday machines that need a constant signal.

WPS antennas are not always the primary communication link. Many companies use antennas as "fail-safe" devices to keep data flowing when a cable is broken. A couple of convenience store chains sport WPS antennas on their roofs to keep the cash registers talking to the head office, even if a backhoe digs through a communication line.

"We're kind of like a backup power generator," Larson says.

Another, smaller piece of their business, is helping homeowners and small businesses to boost cellular phone reception within buildings.

Cellular coverage is becoming such a necessity in today's society that local doctors and others who are on-call for emergencies avoid businesses without adequate signals, Larson says.

Stewartville co. to build $10M expansion, add 50 to 60 jobs

A Stewartville manufacturer says it will soon build a $10 million to $12 million complex and add 50 to 60 new jobs.

Jim Conway, CEO and president of catheter maker Rochester Medical Corp., says the 54,000-square-foot complex will include an automated production line, clean-room packaging facilities, offices and warehouse space.

The expansion is expected to increase production by about 1 million catheters, and the company anticipates adding 50 to 60 employees to its Stewartville work force of about 250. Rochester Medical has about 400 employees worldwide.

The new building will be near Rochester Medical's current facility on the hill above Pizza Ranch, overlooking U.S. 63. Conway says it will be built on a field long slated for expansion. Company officials are waiting for bids from contractors but hope to have the project under way this fall.

Rochester Medical updated its manufacturing lines this spring, which increased production by 50 percent.

The firm, which sells about two-thirds of its products outside of the United States, posted its best-ever earnings in May and a record $15.25 million in sales. It wrapped up its fourth quarter at the end of September, and the 2012 earnings are expected to be released by the end of this month.

The expansion is driven by a new project that is picking up speed.

"The main reason we want to get started right now is a new catheter technology that we are super excited about," Conway says. "We didn't know this was coming. This has come up in the past seven or eight months."

While he is keeping the technical details under wraps for now, this new development is described as "very significant," and Rochester Medical is anxious to get it to the market.

The company historically has focused on unique innovations vs. "me-too" products. This week it released a new type of male external catheter with a special adhesive that allows moisture to be wicked away through its silicone sheath. It's the first of its kind on the market.

"That's the only way we are able to compete with the multi-billion-dollar companies that are our competitors," Conway says.

He says Rochester Medical's unconventional approach to research and design has fueled its success. Instead of a separate R&D department, it uses small teams made up of people from all areas, like research, manufacturing, packaging and marketing, to work on projects. That approach brings a variety of viewpoints together to develop a new product and a path to take the concept to market.

Wearable heart monitor developed with Mayo Clinic gets FDA appproval

Doctors will soon be able to monitor a patient's heart beat after they've left the hospital thanks to a new wearable monitor system developed in Rochester in collaboration with Mayo Clinic.

The BodyGuardian Remote Monitoring System, a series of small wearable monitors created by Preventice with Mayo Clinic, got Food and Drug Administration approval Monday to be used by doctors to track non-lethal arrhythmia or irregular heart beats. The monitors are paired with a dedicated cell phone that allows doctors to check on a patient's heart rate at any time through a secure web site on their computers or via their iPad tablets.

"This is Preventice's single biggest milestone as a company. It's something we've been working toward for two years," says Michael Emerson, Preventice's senior vice president of marketing.

The device tracks a patient's breathing and movement as well as their heart beat to give doctors a complete picture of what is going on, even though the patient is at home.

It is expected to be commercially available by the end of the year, which means doctors will be able to prescribe it as a patient is released from the hospital and continue to monitor their condition.

The devices are expected to be manufactured in Europe and then set-up with software by Preventice in Minnesota. Emerson said the firm has not really begun to talk to hospitals and care facilities about contracting the BodyGuardian system yet, though marketing is expected to start this year.

Mayo Clinic, as the main collaborator that helped develop the system, will certainly have first priority as a customer, he said.

Preventice's BodyGuardian could help reduce the length of hospital stays, which could reduce the cost of health care, says Emerson. And it could improve a patient's recovery in a way that is less invasive than being treated in a medical facility.

"Health care today is very well-orchestrated, right up until the moment you walk outside of hospital," he said. "This technology can help with that transition, both in having it happen earlier and in having it show better success."

Mayo Clinic officials believe BodyGuardian will be a very effective tool.

“This platform has the potential to positively impact health-care outcomes," said Dr. Charles Bruce, a Mayo Clinic consultant in cardiovascular diseases and internal medicine, in the Preventice's announcement about the FDA approval.

Preventice is headquartered in Minneapolis and its main research and development site is in Rochester on West Circle Drive. It also works closely with Mayo Clinic, which holds a financial stake in the company.

The 5-year-old Preventice started out as Boost Information Systems in Rochester, before evolving into its current form. Preventice has created a number of health-related phone apps in conjunction with Mayo Clinic as well as building its own health data platform to keep patients and care providers connected and engaged.

Besides its facilities it Rochester and Minneapolis, Preventice also has an office in Fargo, N.D.

Emerson said the growing company has between 50 to 100 employees at the moment.

This health care niche of remote monitoring is growing rapidly and is expected to be fueled by the need to care for the country's rapidly aging population.

Experts anticipate almost 5 million patients will be using some type of wireless monitoring like this by 2016. The global market for this estimated to be worth more than $9 billion by 2014.