uScope.com Web Site Features On-Line Microscope
Call it OC ocular entrepreneurship.
Last week this column brought you the news of a device in its final phase of clinical trials that is used to correct farsightedness, manufactured by Irvine-based Refractec.
C and C Vision in Aliso Viejo is just beginning its trip through the regulatory obstacle course. The company hopes to get the go-ahead by the FDA to begin formal clinical trials this quarter of its implantable lens to correct presbyopia,a condition that prevents eyes from focusing on close objects. The condition typically strikes those older than 45 with early cataracts.
The product, called an accommodating intraoccular lens, moves backward and forward along the axis of the eye when the patient changes his focus.
“The movement is automatic and is produced by the brain’s commands to contract and relax the ciliary muscle of the eye,” said Anaheim Ophthalmologist Dr. Stewart Cumming, who developed the product over the course of a decade.
The company, which has five full-time employees and 10 consultants, was founded in 1998 to support this product. “Current standard monofocal implants cannot correct distance and near vision,” said company chairman and CEO Andy Corley.
The lens is expected to be available in 2003.
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Another health information web site has sprung up in Orange County,this time in Garden Grove. But officials at uScope.com say their site not only offers the whole shebang, but a new tool called telepathology.
Telepathology allows a pathologist to make a diagnosis by viewing a digital image via an online microscope. The technology has two uses: offering the use of a pathologist to rural hospitals who don’t have the budget to keep one on staff and to patients who want a second opinion, said company spokesman Lee Greene.
“We are not aware of any other health-information web sites that have this kind of technology,” Greene said.
The site also presents the kind of information found on other sites, ranging from the latest disease findings to how to treat flu symptoms, as well as links to other business-to-consumer sites. Also offered: medical equipment auctions.
Pilot programs are slated to begin at the end of the month at the UCI Medical School (under Dr. Ron Barr) and at Smith Kline Beecham Clinical Laboratories (a division of Quest Diagnostics) in St. Louis.
Dr. Jeffrey Light, owner of Empire Pathology Medical Group in Garden Grove, started the web site.
An informal survey of those attending UCI’s annual Health Care Forecast Conference showed that a wide majority think President Clinton will get his way on perhaps his top healthcare priority. Seventy-two percent predict the president’s plan to expand Medicare benefits for prescription drugs will be enacted by Congress. They weren’t so sure it was a good idea, however: 61% believe Clinton’s initiative will threaten Medicare’s solvency.
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UCI officials broke ground last week on the Robert R. Sprague Family Foundation Hall at the university’s College of Medicine. Sprague Hall, the second building in the UCI Biomedical Research Center at the college, will be used to study the role genes play in cancer. The hall is named for Robert and Margaret Sprague, Corona del Mar residents who gave a $5 million gift HealthCare Foundation for Orange County, a private foundation that provides grants to help low-income families in the county, has given $330,000 for community-based family health, prenatal and dental services offered by Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, St. Joseph Hospital and UCI Medical Center February is heart month, according to the American Heart Association. Local web sites such as St. Jude Medical Center’s www.myhealth2000.com and Irvine-based MedicineNet.com have posted information focusing on women and cardiovascular diseases Atairgin Technologies Inc., Irvine, announced the formation of an eight-member Clinical Advisory Board composed of experts in oncology, ovarian cancer, obstetrics and gynecology and other areas related to women’s health A new business to help alleviate the burden of caring for the elderly at home has started up in Brea. Home Instead Senior Care, which serves the North Orange County area, provides caregivers for a few hours or 24 hours a day Allergan’s Sensar Foldable Acrylic Posterior Chamber Intraocular Lens has received FDA approval for marketing in the U.S. ChromaVision Medical Systems Inc. announced that it has released four new Automated Cellular Imaging Systems to allow cancer physicians to more accurately predict how a patient’s cancer will act. The process will help doctors better tailor therapy for each patient. The company’s ACIS platform supports six tests, and more are expected to be launched this year.
