Courtesy of The Journal Record

ARDMORE – Oklahoma has untapped angel investors throughout the state that need only be identified and introduced to opportunities in order to play their part in Oklahoma’s economic growth, SeedStep Angels Coordinator Michael Kindrat-Pratt said.

The expansion of the SeedStep program in Ardmore has brought eight more potential investors into the fold, he said. Founded three years ago, SeedStep has had chapters only in Oklahoma City and Tulsa so far. Total membership is now about 40.

“The establishment of a chapter in southern Oklahoma is an important milestone for both the SeedStep Angels and for high-growth companies across the state seeking critical investment capital,” Kindrat-Pratt said. “We’re pleased that this group … continues to grow.”

SeedStep members must be accredited investors as defined in the Securities Act of 1933. That means an individual net worth (or joint net worth with the person’s spouse) that exceeds $1 million or an income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years and a reasonable expectation of maintaining that income.

It should be no surprise that Ardmore, with a population of about 25,000, has angel investor potential, Ardmore Development Authority President and CEO Wes Stucky said. The city is small but economically vital, with a statistical population drawn from surrounding areas of about 55,000, as recognized by the U.S. Census.

“In a community this size, we’re not going to be generating a number of deals that would be of interest,” he said. “It’s just a fact of life in a micropolitan city. But on the other hand, we do have a few deals of our own, and we do have some investors that might be interested in deals elsewhere. And why should they be precluded from looking?

“I suspect that some of our members will never invest in a deal in Ardmore, but they may invest in Tulsa or Oklahoma City,” he said. “And I think that everyone needs to realize that what is healthy for those cities and the state is healthy for Ardmore.”

SeedStep last year invested about $600,000 in six early-stage companies, said Tom Walker, president and CEO of i2E Inc., the state’s nonprofit corporation that mentors many Oklahoma technology-based startups. The i2E receives state appropriations from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology for activities such as managing SeedStep.

Angels invest their own funds directly in a business, while venture capitalists usually invest funds from other sources. Collectively, angel groups may meet with startup representatives and entrepreneurs seeking equity investment, but individual SeedStep members make their own decisions about which investments to make. Members are not required to invest at all.

Among last year’s SeedStep investments were Oklahoma City-based DermaMedics and Tulsa’s ExpertTA. Early investment rounds usually attract about $100,000 each, and sometimes on the higher end of the scale even as much as $1 million.

Kindrat-Pratt said the Ardmore chapter is the result of efforts by Stucky, who sits on the i2E board of directors. He said SeedStep will also look at other of the state’s larger cities for expansion.

“Through the last couple of years it’s been difficult for people to join the group, but we’ve continued to provide deal flow even though difficult economic times and there has been an appetite for angel investment as part of an overall investment portfolio,” Kindrat-Pratt said. “Now we’re seeing that there are more folks beyond just our largest metro areas that are interested.

“And unlike the coasts – say, Boston or New York – where you have a tremendous amount of people within city limits, we’re finding that taking a regional approach to angel investment is going to be a better way for us to grow the network,” he said.

Click here to read the story at the Journal Record website.

This week, an interview took us to the Kramer School of Nursing on the Oklahoma City University campus, where we encountered something we had not seen before — a classroom created to look and feel exactly like a hospital setting.

We were on campus to shoot a video with Jim Durbin, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Health Care Workforce Center, about a new software product it has developed called the Clinical Hub.

The Clinical Hub was created to provide a more efficient way for hospitals and medical education institutions to schedule students for their required clinical training. Hospitals post their available clinical dates on the Web-based software, while schools check to see what dates are open and then schedule individual students.

We wanted to shoot Durbin in a clinical setting, which wasn’t really possible with patient privacy concerns at a hospital or medical clinic.

So, we found an awesome alternative.  It was a full-scale clinical laboratory for OCU nursing students that looks like a hospital setting, complete with equipment, beds and professionals in medical scrubs providing health care. Instead of working with real patients, the students care for life-size, life-like mannequins.

The faux clinical lab is located in a new three-story Kramer School of Nursing building that also offers plenty of traditional classroom space for the growing OCU nursing program. We shot an interview in a classroom and footage of students in the clinical lab before the afternoon was done.  We are grateful to OCU for allowing us to shoot the interview and clinical footage on its campus.

I can’t predict where the next video interview will take us, but I do know it’s likely to be an interesting journey in a unique setting like the clinical lab at OCU’s Kramer School of Nursing. Stay tuned.

Courtesy of The Journal Record

OKLAHOMA CITY – Orthocare Innovations has developed a new vacuum system for connecting prosthetics to tissue that is more comfortable and a better fit for the individual, CEO Doug McCormack said.

The Oklahoma City company recently launched its patented Edison Adaptive Vacuum Suspension System for domestic sale. Market response has been positive, he said.

The Edison system was developed by Orthocare through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program under contract with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

It is manufactured by Orthocare at the company’s main facility at Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park; the company also has a research lab in Seattle.

“This product can really help improve the fit and function for prosthetic devices for a broader segment of the market than traditional devices of this type have been able to address,” he said.

It’s particularly beneficial for people with diabetes and vascular diseases because their skin can be more sensitive to higher vacuum pressures, he said.

Similar to other models, the Edison locks itself in place against a person’s amputated limb with a vacuum seal, and the prosthetic unit is attached to that. The typical suction devices currently on the market are not very adaptable to individual needs and often require readjustments throughout the day. In effect, McCormack said, patients tend to adjust to the prosthesis instead of the other way around.

But the Edison is constantly processing feedback to make tiny adjustments to the prosthesis in response to an individual’s activities. And it does so much more quietly, he said.

“We’ve taken the approach that there are times when the vacuum pressure should be ramped up to help improve suspension of the limb, but when you’re sitting or standing or walking slowly, you don’t need to maintain that same high level of pressure,” he said. “After turning Edison on each morning, patients go about their day feeling the benefits of elevated vacuum, but without hearing the pump or needing to adjust the unit. There is no need for the user to manually make a change that will have to be adjusted again a few minutes later.”

Although the original intent was to improve suspension sensitivity in general, company researchers found that the Edison was more efficient and effective for lower limbs.

McCormack said prosthetic vacuum systems are approved for reimbursement by Medicare and most private insurance payers, which enhances the Edison’s marketability. The company has distribution in 19 other countries as well, recently adding Japan and several European countries after a tour this month.

“It’s nice to see that products we’re producing here in Oklahoma are making it into markets worldwide,” he said. “And we’ve continued to bring capital from outside the state in to Oklahoma. We have now raised $11 million in private investment capital, all from one source in Boston.”

The product also incorporates technology under license from Ohio Willow Wood Co. The companies were working on parallel research lines and ultimately decided to combine their efforts rather than “do battle,” McCormack said.

Click here to read the article at the Journal Record website.

Editor’s Note: We interrupt our four-part series exploring angel investing to honor the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth.

Monday was the 50th anniversary of astronaut John Glenn’s historic orbit around the Earth.

I’ve always had a passion for anything having to do with our nation’s space program. I get it from my dad. Growing up, our house was full of Time-Life books on history, including the space race, which I flipped through over and over.

My dad, Tommy Thurman Walker, is a chemist and a lifelong student of political science and current events. To this day he likes to share chemistry formulas during conversation ending with … “savvy?” (As if I truly understand.) While I get all fired up about the technology behind man’s quest of space, my dad has a cool way of putting Glenn’s mission into perspective.

“I was in college when Sputnik went up,” he said. “The Russians put a meaningless satellite into space, but that meant they were ahead of us. When John Kennedy took office in ’61, one of his first speeches to Congress was about going to the moon by the end of the decade.”

There was a lot of talk about the wisdom of putting money into a space program. There were debates that it would help the economy because of the jobs and the research, while other people said the country was just throwing money away.

“We were just coming out of a recession,” my dad said. “John Glenn was a hero. He gave legitimacy to the program. Young people were enthusiastic about space and what the future held. That’s the way I felt, like it was going to create jobs and prosperity.”

Later, when the recession abated and my dad was able to get a job in his field working with the chemical separation of metal, his company received a direct order for a high purity niobium.

“It was to be used as a heat shield in an Apollo space flight,” he said.

And that’s the point. The bold idea of putting men on the moon created a shared national vision that produced amazing technologies and jobs, from the miniaturization of electronics to global positioning systems.

NASA’s current requested budget is the lowest in four years. Given the spending disciplines this country needs to embrace, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

What would be bad is for us to forget and ignore how critically important federally funded pipelines are for the science and technology that create jobs for heroes and regular Americans, like my dad and John Glenn.

Tom Walker is president and CEO of i2E Inc., a nonprofit corporation that mentors many of the state’s technology-based startup companies. i2E receives state appropriations from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology. Contact him at i2E_Comments@i2E.org.

 Click here to read the article at newsok.com.

My parents were recent newlyweds then, living on Exchange Avenue in Oklahoma City, within walking distance of the Cattleman’s Café.

My dad, Tommy Thurman Walker, had a degree in chemistry and, in his words, “had fulfilled his obligation in the Army,” and was working, but not in his field.

Last week my dad talked about those years and the significance that the so-called Space Race had for him.

“We were living good. You could rent a nice apartment cheap,” Dad says. “The lady who owned the building lived downstairs. She was a music teacher and had a piano and organ in her apartment. Her musician friends came in at night, played music, and trotted cocktails upstairs to include us.”

Dad was in college when Sputnik went up.

“That was in the late ’50s,” Dad says. “I was in a physics class, my first class of the morning. The professor, a young Ph.D., filled three walls of blackboard with calculations about how much less energy the Russians could have used if they had put the rocket up going with instead of against the rotation of the earth. He spent the entire 50 minutes on those calculations. He was so excited. He was going to share everything he knew with us.”

Dad remembers President Kennedy’s early speech to Congress setting the goal of reaching the moon in the next 10 years.

“The ’50s had been all about chasing Communists,” Dad says. “That was kind of depressing. Then the Space Race came along. It was a different kind of response to the Russians — a big idea. That kind of competition with the Russians was a much more positive thing. Young people were for it. I remember those as exciting times.”

Until Mr. Glenn’s flight, the U.S. was playing catch-up ball with the Russians, who had launched a dog and two men, Yuri A. Gagarin and Gherman S. Titov into orbit.

“We had a lot of failure of those rockets,” Dad says. “A lot of them just blew up, ours and the Russians, too.”

Prior to Mr. Glenn, the U.S. managed two manned suborbital flights, with Alan Shepard (the first American in space) and Virgil ‘Gus” Grissom, of about 15 minutes each.

Mr. Glenn’s launch had numerous false starts as weather and mechanical issues caused 10 scrubbed launches in the month before the actual flight.

On the 11th try, Friendship 7 left the earth, but things weren’t smooth. After the first orbit, something happened with the automatic controls, and Mr. Glenn took over for most of the rest of the flight.

“John Glenn fulfilled a promise. He was a national hero,” Dad says. “He had a very likable personality. He was a soft-spoken man. He had to take control at re-entry, and that made him even more of a hero. He wasn’t just riding along. He was actually operating the capsule.”

The Friendship 7 capsule of the Mercury 6 Atlas rocket was named by Mr. Glenn.

“It was a pretty small vessel,” Dad says. “They used to have them on display in the Houston NASA facility. When I saw that capsule, I was surprised at how small it was. It didn’t have paint. It wasn’t shined up.”

My parents didn’t see the moment of John Glenn’s launch on TV. My Mom, Lou, had brought a TV into the marriage, but the picture tube was out. Readers, always, they got their information from the radio and newspapers.

However, they didn’t miss the 1969 Apollo landing on the moon.

They were at Six Flags over Texas with me in a stroller and my older brother and sister in tow. “They had TV sets outside the rides,” Dad remembers, “so you could watch what was going on as we were waiting in line to get on a ride.”

The Space Race is still an icon for Innovation.

Today, on the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s historic mission, we honor him. We are reminded of the power of vision, of technology, and of soft-spoken leadership and courage.

The incubator reports to be the first of its kind “to focus on nurturing American and Chinese startups to expand beyond their home countries” and was created by a partnership of two China companies, a China-based VC firm, and Silicon Valley Bank, the premier bank dedicated to the innovation sector.

Tsinghua University Science Park (TusPark), founded in 1994, has more than 30 university and technology science parks throughout China. Shui On Group (Shui On), is a diversified group engaged in property development and construction with interests in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland.  Northern Light Venture Capital (NLVC) is a China-focused venture capital firm with $1 billion under management.

As for Silicon Valley Bank, in 2011, 70 percent of Businessweek’s Top Entrepreneurs and 68 percent of WSJ Top VC-Backed Companies were the bank’s customers.

“SVB is proud to be a part of InnoSpring, China’s first incubator in the San Francisco Bay Area. We hope our involvement will help accelerate the growth and prosperity of entrepreneurial companies both in China and Silicon Valley,” said Ken Wilcox, Silicon Valley Bank Chairman.

The InnoSpring incubator, which is based in a 13,500 square foot building, will reportedly house 30 to 50 early stage startups and cover a range of technologies including mobile, media, software, healthcare and renewable.

InnoSpring has announced services that, in addition to comprehensive incubation services and physical space, include facilitation with Chinese public agencies, business development, and funding for companies wishing to expand into China.

Silicon Valley and Oklahoma are different in many ways, but when it comes to entrepreneurship and innovation, not so much.

Geographies that invest in innovation and entrepreneurial companies as the engines of job and wealth creation recognize the benefits of larger, growing, markets beyond region, state, and even country borders. For example, 79 percent of the revenues generated by i2E portfolio companies are obtained outside the state.

We like that balance of trade. We’d like it even better if we could increase the percentage that came from outside the country.

The InnoSpring incubator is just getting started. But it tees up a visionary idea — a portal between US-based startups and one if the largest, growing markets of the world.

Watch that space.

The SeedStep Angels, an Oklahoma-based Angel investment group, recently established a chapter in Ardmore with eight founding members. SeedStep Angels is composed of successful Oklahomans who invest in high-growth businesses, seeking high returns on their investments and the opportunity to mentor new entrepreneurs.

Founded in 2009 by i2E Inc., the group is approaching 40 members, with chapters in Oklahoma City and Tulsa in addition to Ardmore.

The SeedStep Angels group is managed by i2E’s Michael Kindrat-Pratt. Wes Stucky, president and CEO of the Ardmore Development Authority and a member of the i2E Inc. board, helped organize the Ardmore chapter.

Last year, the SeedStep Angels made several investments. Companies invested in included Oklahoma City-based DermaMedics and Tulsa’s ExpertTA.

Although they look at deals as a group, investments are made by individual members. Four potential deals are presented to the group every two months, with one or two companies invited to make a formal presentation.

Click here to read the article at newsok.com

Copyright © 2012, The Oklahoma Publishing Company

After several years of development, Orthocare Innovations is ready to sell its patented system designed to improve the fit and function of prosthetic devices.

And the product will be made in Oklahoma City.

“We’re very excited about it,” Orthocare CEO Doug McCormack said Wednesday. “We’re super excited that we’re following through on the vision we laid out in terms of producing the product in the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park.”

The system, called Edison, is a smarter, quieter, more adaptable method of using vacuum to attach a prosthesis to the body, McCormack said. Current mechanical vacuum products require adjustment by the user, and electrical products are noisy, he said.

“We’ve received very positive feedback from clinicians around the country who have been testing it,” he said.

The product’s adaptability also could make it a choice for patients with diabetes or peripheral vascular disease, many of whom may not tolerate constant, high levels of vacuum in traditional products.

Edison’s pricing will be based on the level of Medicare and insurance reimbursement providers can obtain. Andrew Pollock, Orthocare technical services manager, estimated that reimbursement would be about $3,600.

The company believes there is a market for about 50,000 units a year, said Stephen Jacobs, Orthocare vice president of sales and marketing.

Pollock said Edison operates like a large syringe to adjust the vacuum that secures the prosthesis, even as the activity level of the person wearing it changes. Other adjustable devices change the vacuum level through a pump that may hum loudly when activated, he said.

“Ours is a very quiet and efficient mechanism,” Pollock said. “It eliminates that noise factor.”

Edison also is “intelligent,” storing data that can be accessed via software the company provides. That function allows the device to diagnose performance problems, Jacobs said.

Two patients who helped test the device said they would switch to Edison after using it for two weeks, Jacobs said.

“We believe we’re a little company out of Oklahoma City with a product that can really be the market leader based on what it offers,” Jacobs said.

Orthocare, based in Seattle, has had its manufacturing, sales and marketing operations in Oklahoma for nearly four years.

Background: Edison was initially developed by Orthocare under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, under contract with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Click here to read the article at newsok.com.

News Release

Orthocare Innovations Launches Edison™ Adaptive Vacuum Suspension System; Production Begins in Oklahoma City Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park

Oklahoma City, OK, February 14, 2012 – Orthocare Innovations has launched for domestic sale its patented Edison™ Adaptive Vacuum Suspension System. Edison™ is a novel approach to improving the fit and function of lower limb prosthetic devices.

“Edison™ represents the next step in Orthocare Innovations’ advances in adaptive prosthetics systems,” commented Orthocare Chief Executive Officer Doug McCormack. “We looked hard at the drawbacks of existing elevated vacuum suspension systems, and identified two key areas for improvement: noise reduction, and automatic suspension adjustment across a full range of functional activities. Edison™ represents a significant improvement over existing products in this emerging product category by addressing these limitations of competitive products.”

Prosthesis users function differently, and each patient changes his or her activity constantly. Edison™ automatically adjusts the elevated vacuum to the user’s functional needs, rather than requiring patients to adapt to their prostheses. After turning Edison™ on each morning, patients go about their day feeling the benefits of elevated vacuum, but without hearing the pump or needing to adjust the unit. There is no need for the user to manually make a change that will have to be adjusted again a few minutes later, as activity changes again.

Orthocare intends for these features to make Edison™ address segments of the market that may not currently benefit from elevated vacuum. Patients with diabetes or peripheral vascular disease, for example, may not tolerate constant, high levels of vacuum of traditional products of this type.

Edison™, initially developed by Orthocare under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Revolutionizing Prosthetics program under contract with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, is being manufactured by Orthocare in its facility in the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park. Importantly, prosthetic vacuum systems are approved for reimbursement by Medicare and most private insurance payers.

# # #

About Orthocare Innovations, LLC

Orthocare Innovations is an Oklahoma City-based medical device research and product development company focused on bringing to market advanced, innovative technologies to improve clinical efficiency and enhance the quality of patient care services in the rehabilitation, prosthetic and orthotic markets. For more information, go to orthocareinnovations.com. Contact: Lisa Parish, Corporate Support Manager; Doug McCormack, CEO 800.672.1710
orthocareinnovations.com

About Edison Adaptive Vacuum Suspension System

Edison is an Orthocare Innovations patented technology (US 8,007,543). Edison also incorporates technologies that are under license from Ohio Willow Wood Company (US 7,914,586, US 7,947,085, and US 8,016,892).

Copyright © 2012, The Oklahoma Publishing Company

ARDMORE — An eight-year-old technology firm here, which previously has focused on the research and development of high-end infrared sensors for night goggles, missile guidance systems and other products largely for the U.S. military, plans by the end of February to start manufacturing light-emitting diodes (LEDs), or low-voltage alternatives to incandescent lights.

Amethyst Research Inc. is teaming with Lightwave Photonics of Minnesota to make LEDs, said Rob Kuester, facilities supervisor for Amethyst.

“They’ll be like the little Christmas lights or lights on ball caps sold at Lowe’s,” he said. “But our lights will be brighter and better than any known light.”

Lightwave, Kuester said, will spray paint chemicals at one-atom thickness on silicon chips, or the base material for semiconductors, and then ship them to Ardmore, where ARI will use a molecular beam epitaxy machine to put on two more elements — gallium and nitrate — before shipping the chips back for final production.

Because of its new manufacturing efforts, Amethyst in May leased an additional 6,000-square-foot building at 123 Case Circle in an industrial park on Ardmore’s western border near Lone Grove, Kuester said. The firm leased an adjacent 5,000-square-foot building in November 2008, after being based for more than 2½ years in an incubator of the Ardmore Development Authority.

Formed in 2004, the company first focused on using a patented hydrogenation process to improve the production efficiency, or fill the defects in, infrared semiconductor chips, Kuester said. How Amethyst gets the hydrogen deep inside the chips, versus just the surface, is proprietary, he said.

Then, scientists used an ion beam accelerator to develop a second technology that, based on the concentration of hydrogen, helps map, or identify, the defects on chips, Kuester said. The company eventually plans to make the chips. But it will be another year before those resources are brought online, he said.

Business manager Nancy Stewart said Amethyst has 25 employees and one paid intern from the National Science Foundation. Annual salaries average $60,000 to $65,000, Kuester said.

Stewart said the company added three new professionals — Michael Aragon, Bill Balliette and Henry Yuan — this month.

Aragon moved from Sachse, Texas, to serve as vice president of technology development. Formerly with Triune Systems and Texas Instruments, he brings experience in advanced silicon technology, circuit design and business development.

Balliette, from Austin, Texas, will support the launching of Topaz Thermoelectric, a spinoff of Amethyst to develop thermoelectric coolers for the infrared sensor and high power laser and electronics market. Most recently chief operations officer of Faradox Energy Storage, a maker of high temperature capacitors, Balliette has more than 17 years of experience in operations, business development, marketing and manufacturing engineering.

Yuan has worked for Amethyst since January 2011 through a partnership with Oklahoma State University, focusing on circuit design and simulation for the development of high-sensitivity thermoelectric focal plane arrays.

Click here to read the article at newsok.com.