FELDMANN: A call to deny our upbringings
Are your personal beliefs on mass transit getting in the way of Indianapolis’ future? As soon as I told my parents that I got a job downtown, they mildly panicked.
Are your personal beliefs on mass transit getting in the way of Indianapolis’ future? As soon as I told my parents that I got a job downtown, they mildly panicked.
Founded in 1960, the Indiana Transportation Museum has been working for decades to preserve the Nickel Plate Railroad’s legacy by offering guests what it calls “moving experiences”—literally.
The federal government has spent $27 billion—and hospital systems have spent even more—to roll out electronic medical records across the industry. But even advocates say the results have been “disappointing.”
The deal calls for the Indianapolis-based NCAA to toughen return-to-play rules for college athletes. It also would create a medical fund to test current and former athletes for brain trauma.
Angie's List Inc. continued to lose money in the third quarter and failed to meet Wall Street expectations. However, the loss was smaller than a year ago, and revenue jumped 24 percent.
A new think tank report, which appears to jibe with Obama administration concerns, calls for “significant revision” to the Pence plan.
Anagin LLC, a company started last year by Indiana University researchers, won the BioCrossroads new venture competition for its plans to develop drugs to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The $25,000 prize from BioCrossroads, an Indianapolis-based life sciences business development group, comes in addition to a $692,706 grant from the National Institutes of Health. Anagin was co-founded by Dr. Anantha Shekhar, a psychiatrist at the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis, and Yvonne Lai, a scientist in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in Bloomington. Anagin is trying to develop drugs that block PTSD without causing common side effects such as irritability, sexual dysfunction, addiction, and memory and motor-skill problems. Along with its BioCrossroads prize and NIH grant, Anagin will receive $50,000 in matching funds from state-funded Elevate Ventures.
Activate Healthcare LLC, an Indianapolis-based workplace health clinic operator, plans to expand its local operations, adding as many as 203 employees over the next nine years. Activate said it will spend $656,080 to lease a 3,400-square-foot office at 9302 N. Meridian St., more than tripling the size of its existing headquarters. The company operates 22 primary health care clinics in the Midwest, including 18 in Indiana that offer care to more than 40,000 patients. The clinics are within or near workplaces. The Indiana Economic Development Corp. said it offered the company $3.9 million in conditional tax credits and up to $200,000 in training grants based on the firm’s job-creation plans. Activate has about 110 full-time Indiana workers, but its base employment will be considered 84, according to the incentives agreement reached with IEDC. That means the company will need to have 287 employees by the end of 2023 to fully comply with the contract.
Eli Lilly and Co. will close one of its three manufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico at the end of 2015, according to the Associated Press. The Indianapolis company said it is closing its Guayama facility because the patents on some of the drugs made there have expired. Lilly intends to sell the Guayama plant. Lilly said the 100 employees who work there will be offered jobs at another of its facilities on the island, which are in Carolina, Puerto Rico. Guayama is in the southeastern part of Puerto Rico, and Carolina is in the northeast. Lilly has announced $240 million in investments in its Carolina facilities since late 2013.
The Indiana Medicaid program will receive more than $181,000 from a fraud settlement struck by states’ attorneys general and the federal government with the drug manufacturer Organon Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. According to The Statehouse File, the settlement resolves whistleblower allegations that Organon underpaid rebates to the state, offered improper financial incentives to nursing home pharmacies, promoted two of its antidepressants for unapproved uses, and misrepresented its drug prices to the Indiana Medicaid program to reap larger margins and increased sales. Organon, which is now owned by New Jersey-based Merck & Co. Inc., will pay $31 million to settle the lawsuits with the states and the federal government. Of that, Indiana Medicaid will receive $162,346 in a settlement arising from a whistleblower lawsuit filed in Massachusetts and $19,016 in a settlement arising from another whistleblower suit filed in Texas.
WISH-TV Channel 8 meteorologist Pamela Gardner is leaving the station to take a job with WBZ-TV, the CBS affiliate in Boston, industry sources told IBJ.
Enlist Duo can be used in six states, with approval pending in another 10, the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday. Dow is counting on the system to help double earnings at Dow AgroSciences in five to seven years.
If you are looking to experience the unexpected, try the first Art in Odd Places fest downtown.
Lafayette-based Emerging Threats Pro LLC said it will invest $967,000 to open an outpost in the Parkwood Crossing office park in Carmel.
The Indiana University School of Medicine will receive nearly $8.5 million from the estate of the late Dr. Suzanne Buckner Knoebel, a cardiologist and longtime professor at the medical school. She died in July at the age of 87. The money will flow into two funds, one of which supports cardiovascular researchers and the other that will pay for cardiology professors to receive training in new techniques and other educational programs. Knoebel was an IU medical school professor from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. In 1982, she became the first female president of the American College of Cardiology.
The Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center will receive $7.8 million over the next five years from the National Cancer Institute to support its research. The grant follows up on a previous grant in 2008 from NCI, which is one of the National Institutes of Health. NCI has designated the IU Simon Cancer Center as one of 68 cancer centers across the country that focus on the rapid translation of research discoveries to directly benefit people with cancer. Purdue University also operates an NCI-designated cancer center, although only the IU center provides care to Indiana cancer patients. The IU Simon Cancer Center includes nearly 200 researchers, who attract $61 million per year in grants.
The Indiana Family of Social Services Administration awarded Purdue Healthcare Advisors at Purdue University a $2.3 million grant to keeping helping independent, rural and urban health care providers to use electronic medical records in ways the federal government defines as “meaningful.” Purdue Healthcare Advisors started its work in February 2010 after Purdue received a $14 million federal grant authorized by the 2009 stimulus bill. Providers eligible for Purdue’s help practice in small or independent groups, or in federally qualified health clinics, community health clinics or rural health clinics.
Gov. Mike Pence named Dr. Jerome Adams to be commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health, replacing Dr. William VanNess, who announced his resignation in August. Adams is a professor of clinical anesthesia at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a staff anesthesiologist at Eskenazi Health. He plans to continue working at Eskenazi even as he serves his role as health commissioner. Previously, he was an anesthesiologist at Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie and a physician rapid responder at Indianapolis Orthopaedic Hospital.
Medicare will reduce payments to 68 Indiana hospitals—a 62-percent increase from last year—for having too many patients return within 30 days.
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. was ordered by a jury to pay more than $2 million to a woman who claimed the company’s Actos diabetes medicine caused her bladder cancer, in the latest of thousands of lawsuits involving the drug to go to trial.
Turnout in the recent vote in Scotland over whether to secede from the United Kingdom was reported to be 85 percent. Turnout in the most recent primary election in Ferguson, Mo., was 12 percent. These are undoubtedly the “poles”—the extremes. Yet … Americans seem evenly divided between those working to increase voter turnout—the League of […]
Nearly two years have passed since Eli Lilly and Co. CEO John Lechleiter called for creating a “world-class” life sciences research institute in Indianapolis, and now the fledgling Indiana Biosciences Research Institute is on the verge of naming its first leader. That choice of a chief executive, expected before Thanksgiving, will telegraph a critical signal […]
Amazon has been developing its own local services marketplace. Yelp is the leading consumer-review service in the retail space. Website Holding company IAC, meanwhile, has a big stash of cash and owns competitor HomeAdvisor.com.
WellPoint created an HMO joint venture with seven big hospitals in Los Angeles. Could it do something similar here? Quite possibly.
Endocyte’s lead drug showed big impact on lung cancer patients, but some analysts think the company should scrap it for a newer drug that is more powerful.
Major Health Partners will construct an $89 million hospital on the north edge of Shelbyville, after nearly a decade of shifting services to that location. According to the Shelbyville News, Major’s board voted Sept. 22 to build a 300,000-square-foot facility in the Intelliplex technology park along Interstate 74 and move from downtown Shelbyville. Construction on the project could begin as early as next month and take about two years to complete. Major first revealed detailed plans for the hospital six weeks ago, but the project could not go forward until the board’s 6-0 vote. The hospital will include 56 beds, all in private rooms, and 38 outpatient observation beds. Major’s current hospital has 72 beds in mostly semi-private rooms. When completed, the new complex will also have four operating rooms and house 57 physicians and a staff of about 930.
Researchers at Purdue University and the Indiana University School of Medicine have received a $3.7 million grant to study how blueberries reduce bone loss in postmenopausal women. The five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine will pay for researchers to conduct human trials aimed at finding the most effective varieties and dosage levels of blueberriers for reducing bone loss. “This is one of the most compelling avenues to pursue in natural products research because blueberries would be a new alternative to osteoporosis drugs and their side effects,” said Connie Weaver, the head of Purdue’s department of nutrition science and one of the grant recipients.
Bernard Health, a health benefits brokerage firm based in Tennessee, opened its second retail store in Indianapolis last week. The 1,270-square-foot store is downtown on Pennsylvania Street, just north of Washington Street. Bernard, which now employs seven here in Indianapolis, opened its first local retail store in the Nora neighborhood in 2012 and now has 12 stores nationwide. For a fee, Bernard helps individuals and small businesses evaluate and purchase health benefits. It is one of several new models being tried out by benefits brokers in Indiana to adapt to new rules and opportunities under Obamacare.
The Indiana University School of Medicine received gifts totaling $1 million on the 40th anniversary of Dr. Larry Einhorn’s discovery of a drug combination therapy that nearly cured testicular cancer. In September 1974, Einhorn, a professor at the IU medical school, first tested the cancer drug cisplatin with two other cancer drugs—a combination that boosted survival rates from the cancer from about 20 percent to 95 percent. According to the medical school, 300,000 patients have survived testicular cancer after receiving the drug therapy Einhorn discovered. The most famous is Lance Armstrong, the cycling champion stripped of his victories after admitting to doping. The gifts will help launch a gene sequencing program among survivors so future patients can be given treatments that reduce side effects and complications. Half the donated money came from A. Farhad Moshiri of Monaco, who previously donated $2 million to IU. Another $300,000 will come from the children of local real estate magnate Sidney Eskenazi and his wife, Lois.