Memphis Commercial Appeal:
Methodist buys 8 more VeinViewers
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
By Daniel Connolly
Excerpts from the article
Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare announced Monday that it is buying eight more VeinViewer devices, a boost for their manufacturer, Luminetx, a Memphis medical equipment company with global ambitions.
The VeinViewer is a device that shows blood vessels under the skin, making it easier for doctors and nurses to make injections and insert intravenous lines.
Since Luminetx took the VeinViewer into full commercialization last fall, chairman and CEO Jim Phillips has taken his perpetually upbeat sales pitch to firms from Memphis and around the world.
Phillips was in Las Vegas Monday, where he planned to use videos of the device in action to help persuade a delegation of Chinese hospital officials to buy thousands of the $25,000 units. The company has already shipped the devices to Brazil, England, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, he said.
"It's one of those kinds of products that every human on the planet really should have access to it," he said.
The VeinViewer, developed by scientists at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has won attention from the likes of the BBC and The Wall Street Journal because of its sheer coolness.
The device uses infrared light and a computer to beam a greenish image of a patient's veins onto the skin in real time.
…The VeinViewer is winning fans like Dr. Joel A. Saltzman, an anesthesiologist at Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center, one of the first hospitals to receive the product for testing.
He said the device prevents doctors from having to do surgery to find patients' veins.
"This translates into less risk to the patients and thousands of dollars saved, as well," Saltzman said.
Phillips says the Methodist sale represents a worldwide trend: Hospitals like the product.
"Being a business guy, you know, you're judged by 'are they buying it," Phillips said. "As they say, 'Are the dogs eating the dog food?' So this announcement with Methodist is very exciting for us because it shows widespread deployment through hospital systems."
The number of VeinViewer units at the children's hospital will rise from one to three, Methodist spokeswoman Mary Alice Taylor said.
Methodist University Hospital and its extended care unit will have three new units, and Methodist North Hospital, Methodist South Hospital, and Methodist Le Bonheur Germantown Hospital will have a new unit each, she said.
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