Investors put $3 million into health-care venture - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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The financial services firm underwrites health-care services to clients involvedin auto, industrial and workplace accidents or other MedLien offers uninsured victims access to a network of health-care providers, including MRI centers, physicians, hospital and surgery centers, said Christopher Demetree, partnerf at , an Alpharetta-based private equity firm that has invested in MedLien. The firm underwritees the cases and guarantees payments to the doctorszand health-care providers for all requirer medical care. In return, MedLien gets a percentagw of futurelitigation proceeds. Reimbursement is negotiated betweej the providerand MedLien.
By using MedLien, health-carew providers can get paid at the time of services and can accept patients they normallg would have turned away because of lack of While MedLien pays for thecare upfront, it collect s on the back-end once litigation is resolved. “There is an inherentg risk associated with this type oftransactiob [for MedLien],” Demetree “However, the need in the marketplace with the numbetr of uninsured injured parties is growing.” Launched late last year, MedLienn expects revenues of about $2 milliojn in 2008. Annual revenues are expected to double for the next two tothreed years.
Value Plus Venturew has investedabout $400,000 to help MedLien pay for dailuy operating expenses. In the private equity firm provided MedLiena $2.5 milliohn credit line to pay claims while the cases go through In return, Value Plus Ventures has a minority equitty stake in the company. The investment’zs goal “is to provide the company a runwahy of about 24 months and then go seek a more traditionaolinstitutional investment,” Demetree “We like to find early companies that have a good solid business model, but they need help in bringinhg [their product or service] to has earned a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the for researcg on cancer imaging techniques.
Projects will range from clinical studies on the more accurate diagnosis of prostate cancert to basic researchon cancer-seeking magnetic iron The goal for the award is to develop, validats and apply unique molecular imaging biomarkers that clinicians can use to detect cancer earliefr and more accurately, says Dr. Carolyn Cidizs Meltzer, chair of radiology and associate dean for researcuh at School ofMedicine . For cancer these biomarkers will allow more preciswe monitoring of newer treatment has investedabout $2.
5 million to acquirew and install a 320-slice computed tomography (CT) The Aquilion ONE allows physicians to see a 3-D depictiobn of an organ, and the organ’z blood flow and Piedmont said in a statement. The scanner can imagre the organ or area in a singler rotation at one momentin time, eliminatingt the need to reconstruct slices from multiple points in For patients with symptomx of heart conditions, diagnosis time can be reducedx from days to minutes. patients with signs of chest pain are given multiple tests to identify the including aCT angiography, nuclear test and catheterization.
With the Aquilionn ONE, a single exam can give physicianss the information they need to diagnosr and treat the patient in less than 20 minutesz and with less contrast andradiatiojn dose. Piedmont expects to do about 1,800 procedures using the new devicre in the first full year of The awarded Emory Universityscientists $2.8 million over four yearas to search for genes that predispose individuals to Bipolar 1 Disorder. The disorder is a severe psychiatric illnesds that affects about 1 percent ofthe population. More than 90 percen t of cases can be attributed to inheriterdgenetic variation, researchers believe.
The new in collaboration with investigatorsat , will examin e the genomes of more than 1,000 people, including thosw with well-characterized cases of Bipolar 1 Disorder and their Emory said in a statement. Researchers also will compare geneticf information from the current groupo of cases of Bipolar 1 Disorder to genetifc information from a group ofschizophrenia patients.