Healthy Smiles for Kids of Orange County upped space dedicated to dental care at its roughly 6,700-square-foot Garden Grove Smile Center. The 700-square-foot general anesthesia area was previously an office—now swapped out to expand the center’s services—and opened last month.
The four additional dental chairs, for a total of 11, will cut wait time in half for general anesthesia treatment and double the number of children who can receive care, a press release from the nonprofit said.
Chief Executive Ria Berger said in the release that one out of three OC kids isn’t treated for tooth decay—“the most common chronic childhood disease.”
The center provides services to low-income families, defined as those at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, about three-fourths of those from Hispanic populations—meaning they self-identify as “Hispanic/Latino,” and say that Spanish is the primary non-English language spoken in the home, a Healthy Smiles spokesperson said.
Patients also include children with special needs who are more likely to develop dental diseases due to “frequent use of medicine high in sugar, reduced clearance of foods from the oral cavity and impaired salivary function.”
Healthy Smiles runs the Garden Grove center, a Smile Clinic at Children’s Hospital Orange County in Orange, and two mobile treatment vehicles. Its programs—disease prevention, oral health education and teledentistry—are up and running in about 100 schools and 550 other community sites in OC.
It treated more than 39,000 patients last year, including 10,000 at its Garden Grove location, totaling about $1.2 million in revenue.
The changes to its Garden Grove center cost $330,000, backed by $75,000 from the David R. Clare and Margaret C. Clare Foundation in Morristown, N.J., which gives to education, children, youth and social services causes, and Roman Catholic churches and schools, its website said.
Hip in Orange
Fusion Biotec Inc. said it will tap a creative vibe that’s more convenient to employees in a new 3,000-square-foot design studio in Orange—a move that also gives the medical device design and engineering startup the first office space that’s all its own.
Fusion had been sharing space in Irvine.
The new location is in a 1930s-era former ice house built to store citrus fruit.
“We moved here for the creative atmosphere,” said Chief Executive Bruce Sargeant, who also noted the location is better for his eight employees, some of whom previously worked for medical device maker Beckman Coulter Inc. in Brea and live in north OC.
“[Orange] is centrally located with good access to freeways,” he said. “It’s a long commute [for workers] to Irvine.”
Sargeant and Chief Commercial Officer Steve Maylish co-founded Fusion last March. Maylish had worked for medical device companies that included Edwards Lifesciences Corp. in Irvine; Sargeant was the chief technology officer in the U.S. for Germany-based BIT Analytical Instruments GmbH.
Sargeant sold a prior company, Source Scientific LLC, to BIT in 2012 for an undisclosed sum; the firms had about $14 million and $50 million in annual revenue, respectively, at the time.
Source Scientific did both design and manufacturing; Fusion is purely a design firm. It collaborates with medical device software developer Promenade Software Inc.—the one Fusion shared space with in Irvine—to provide full engineering services. Manufacturing is sourced through third-party manufacturers.
“After you design something you have to build it and make it in large quantity,” Sargeant said. Separating manufacturing means “we can keep our creative focus on the design side and not get distracted by the day-to-day operation.”
The new space is part of a mixed-use project of offices, artist studios and residential lofts, Fusion’s website said. Interiors retain cavernous ceilings and other elements from the building’s original use for refrigerated food storage.
“Startups, creative groups don’t need a lot of infrastructure,” Maylish said.
Fusion Biotec commonly has five to six projects going at a time. Current work includes a heater-cooler physical therapy device and a system for blood clotting.
Bits & Pieces
Irvine-based Masimo Corp. received European CE marking for noninvasive blood pressure measurements for the Rad-97 Pulse CO-Oximeter and connectivity hub, adding blood pressure to oxygen saturation, total hemoglobin and other measurements. Masimo makes noninvasive patient monitoring devices. … Kaiser Permanente Irvine Medical Center received Magnet recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Kaiser Irvine has about 800 nurses. About 450 U.S. hospitals out of 6,300 hospitals got the honor, including 33 facilities in California.
