Mission Viejo-based Auxilio Inc. is combining diversification plays and growth in its core as a managed print services company focused on the healthcare industry.
It’s been “spending heavily on integration and growth of our IT security business while also implementing the largest group of [managed print services] contracts in our history,” Chief Executive Joe Flynn said on a recent earnings call with investors and analysts.
Auxilio implemented its products through winning contracts last year representing 872 locations, including 32 acute care facilities, according to Flynn. He said that with those contracts, “the company now truly has a national presence from coast to coast.”
Auxilio’s national portfolio includes 220 hospital campuses, and it manages more than 1.5 billion documents from 90,000 devices.
Flynn also commented on Auxilio’s healthcare security thrust.
“The timing for us to build an [exclusive sole supplier] security offering in healthcare couldn’t be better, given the increasing demand with [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] on health systems in general and the consistent recurrence of high-profile breaches,” he said.
Healthcare historically “has been behind the financial and retail sectors in regards to having a mature security program, but that is beginning to change,” Flynn said.
He cited a late-March ransomware attack on Columbia, Md.-based MedStar Health, a not-for-profit that has 10 hospitals in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, noting that such attacks “are targeting industries such as healthcare with employees [who aren’t] trained to recognize phishing attacks, systems are antiquated and budgets are low.”
He said Auxilio has opportunities to pick up more security customers, particularly in view of a PricewaterhouseCoopers report that showed 88% of its healthcare industry respondents planned to increase or keep their security budgets the same this year, and that 53% of those respondents intended to spend more than $1 million this year on things such as social engineering training, controls and risk management.
ICU Signs B. Braun Deal
San Clemente-based ICU Medical Inc. said late last month that it signed a long-term distribution deal with Germany-based B. Braun Melsungen AG.
B. Braun Melsungen is the parent company of B. Braun Medical Inc., which employs about 1,300 in Orange County.
The deal gives B. Braun Melsungen distribution rights to promote ICU’s SwabCap disinfecting device for needle-free intravenous connectors in certain countries outside of the U.S.
ICU said in a statement that customers will be able to buy SwabCap from B. Braun Melsungen in over 30 international locations.
SwabCap is disposable and disinfects needle-free connectors with 70% isopropyl alcohol when attached to an intravenous catheter.
Device OK’d
Lake Forest-based Tenex Health Inc. said late last month that the Food and Drug Administration gave it 510 (k) clearance for its TX2 MicroTip device.
TX2 MicroTip is used to treat tendinosis of the shoulder and hip. Tendinosis is a term for chronic tendinitis.
The new device is 2 inches longer than Tenex’s previous TX1 device incarnation, something the company said in a news release allows doctors to have easier access to patients’ shoulders and hips.
“The longer needle associated with the TX2 product will provide physicians the needed technology to definitively treat chronic tendinosis in the shoulder and hip. Soft tissue injuries in both of these body parts are well suited to be treated through a minimally invasive approach using the TX2 product,” said Dr. James Andrews, an orthopedic sports surgeon who runs the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Gulf Breeze, Fla.
Bits & Pieces
Irvine-based Proove Biosciences Inc. said it will expand its sales force by adding more authorized distributors and independent sales representatives. The company specializes in what it calls “precision medicine,” including genetic testing that examines patients’ risk for prescription opioid abuse and how they metabolize drugs. … Anaheim-based Tru-D LLC said it exhibited its SmartUVC disinfection robot during the Association for Perioperative Registered Nurses’ Surgical Conference and Expo this month in Anaheim. SmartUVC is deployed in hospital rooms and operating rooms after traditional cleaning methods are performed. … Mission Viejo-based MYnd Analytics Inc. said it received a pair of institutional review board approvals for its psychiatric electroencephalogram evaluation registry. The board’s approval allows MYnd to enroll about 500 patients at initial trial sites in Southern California and Canada.
