Orange County’s population is 3.2 million, and 13.5% of residents are 65 and older, a segment projected to double by 2040, according to a report by Orange County Healthy Aging. Given a quarter of the population will be seniors, age-related conditions, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, will become more relevant.
The 28th annual Southern California Alzheimer’s Disease Research Conference at the Irvine Marriott Hotel last month focused on sensitive subjects in dementia care, including driving, elder abuse and neglect, sex and intimacy, and end-of-life care. The event was intended to provide information and drive discussion.
Panelists said caring for dementia is challenging. When considering driving, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s isn’t enough to revoke driving privileges in all states—California Department of Motor Vehicles can revoke driving privileges, depending on the degree of dementia—leaving the question of when a doctor should make the call that a patient stop driving. And what to do with the potential consequences once that decision is made, such as depression from lack of mobility and social isolation?
University of California-Irvine’s Institute for Memory and Impairments and Neurological Disorders—one of 30 Alzheimer’s disease research centers in the U.S. and the only one in OC funded by the National Institutes of Health—hosted the event. Joshua Grill, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at UCI’s medical school and a co-director of the institute, said the biggest challenge in understanding age-related neurological disorders is getting study participants to enroll.
“The most common reason clinical trials fail is the failure to recruit adequate participation,” he said. The problem extends to all types of study, not just those relating to neurological disorders.
Last year the university launched the Consent2Contact registry, which is designed to help match OC adults with UCI clinical research studies. He said more than 750 are enrolled; all adults are eligible.
Grill said he hopes more will sign up, and urged eligible candidates to take advantage of “this great medical center in our backyard” and help make “an impact in the world.”
Institute Adds Owner
The Innovation Institute in La Palma added Mercy Health in Cincinnati to its member-owner board, bringing the number to six. The Catholic health system, which serves Ohio and Kentucky, joins Renton, Wash.-based Providence St. Joseph Health, Bon Secours Health System Inc. in Marriottsville, Md., Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System in Baton Rouge, Fla., and Avera Health in Sioux Falls, S.D.
The institute is a for-profit LLC owned by nonprofit hospitals. It’s structured to facilitate innovation by doctors, hospital employees and industry partners. The institute is comprised of a lab that serves as its incubator and accelerator; a healthcare venture capital fund; and an enterprise development group that owns a portfolio of cash-flowing companies.
Mercy Health is the largest health system in Ohio, with more than 33,500 employees across 500 care sites, including 23 hospitals and eight senior-living communities.
FDA OKs Catheters
ReFlow Medical Inc. in San Clemente secured Food and Drug Administration approval for its Wingman14C Crossing Catheter, which is used in conjunction with a guidewire to treat blocked coronary arteries.
The company makes blood vessel-targeting devices used to treat cardiovascular diseases. It was founded in 2011 and has raised $1.4 million in two rounds of equity financing, according to CrunchBase.
ReFlow previously received clearance in the U.S. and Europe for treating blocked peripheral vessels. The device is designed to treat both coronary and below-the-knee vessels.
In April Reflow recalled 2,327 units of its other product, Wingman35, after it received two complaints that the device’s tip split or separated.
Bits & Pieces
Lake Forest-based PSSC Labs partnered with BioSoft Integrators in La Mesa to provide services in high-performance computing—the use of parallel processing for running advanced-application programs more quickly—for researchers in the biotech and genetic research industries. PSSC designs and builds servers, storage solutions and computing platforms used in genomics and bioinformatics research. BioSoft provides next-generation sequencing, laboratory operations, informatics, data integration and computing services. … ReVision Optics Inc. in Lake Forest named Drs. Bret Fisher and Sumit Garg co-medical monitors overseeing clinical performance of the company’s Raindrop corneal inlay product, which is used to correct nearsightedness. They will assume responsibilities previously handled by Dr. Roger Steinert, who died in June. Fisher is medical director of the Eye Center of North Florida, Garg vice chair of clinical ophthalmology, medical director and associate professor at the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute at UCI.
