Company news

Indianapolis-based VoCare Inc. has formed a partnership with Motorola Mobility LLC, a subsidiary of Google Inc., to offer telehealth and remote monitoring services to seniors via Motorola smartphones. The partnership comes as VoCare raised $5 million this spring and is now trying to raise another $20 million. Along with Motorola, VoCare will offer smartphones that come preloaded with applications that connect to health care monitoring peripherals, the peripherals themselves, along with the phone and data services needed to power them. The VoCare phones have a safety button that connects them immediately to a remote call center if they experience falls or other emergencies. Also, VoCare’s remote monitoring system can keep track of seniors' health status as they use the medical peripherals or if their typical movement patterns change, suggesting a change in health. VoCare CEO Steve Peabody said in a prepared statement that the service will allow doctors to keep track of their patients and, using the video functions on the smartphones, make “virtual house calls.”

Indianapolis-based Indigo BioSystems Inc. has changed CEOs after securing $8.5 million in venture capital. The north-side firm of 47 employees makes software used by medical and research labs to review and analyze chemical compounds and tissue samples. Its new CEO is past president Randall Julian, a former Eli Lilly and Co. researcher who founded the company in 2004 through the drugmaker’s venture group. Julian takes over from Raul Zavaleta, who had led the company since 2011 so Julian could focus on product development. Zavaleta remains with the company as a consultant and a board director. Bootstrap Venture Fund LP, headquartered in San Diego, led the $8.5 million investment round. The investment is Indigo's second from a venture capital firm. The company raised $1.8 million in 2011. It has also received $1.75 million in grants from the federally funded 21st Century Research and Technology Fund, as well as $700,000 in conditional tax credits through the Indiana Economic Development Corp.

Indianapolis-based Cornerstone Cos. could break ground this year on an $11 million medical office building, expected to be largely owned by the doctors who practice there. Cornerstone is planning to locate the three-story, 43,000-square-foot building along Interstate 69 on a four-acre site on Olivia Way, which is near both the St. Vincent Fishers Hospital and the Indiana University Health Saxony Hospital. The Fishers Town Council agreed to forgive two-thirds of the property taxes on the project for six years. When the abatement runs out, Deer Creek Point’s property tax bill is expected to be about $178,000 a year—$70,000 more than a retail project would generate, according to projections prepared by public finance firm H.J. Umbaugh & Associates.