Tech Digest: what’s moving in the Midwest

Tech Digest: what’s moving in the Midwest

GE Healthcare profits up 31 percent for quarter

GE Healthcare’s third-quarter profits are up 31 percent from the same quarter last year, the company has reported. The firm’s revenues climbed 43 percent to $3.3 billion from $2.3 billion in Q3 2003. Profits rose to $503 million from $383 million.
Several projects over the quarter were credited for the increase, among them the $9.5 billion acquisition of the London-based healthcare firm Amersham in April and the launch of the LightSpeed VCT, a high-speed scanner that can capture images of the heart and coronary arteries in less than five heartbeats. Thanks to Amersham’s impact and a 41 percent growth in orders for positron emission tomography systems, total orders increased 42 percent to $3.4 billion.
Other projects credited for the increase included the development of the Vivid I miniaturized cardiovascular ultrasound system, called by GE a “stethoscope of the future”, the opening of Oklahoma’s all-digital Saint Francis Heart Hospital with GE’s cardiac imaging and picture archiving software, and the development of a high-powered MRI scanner with the University of Illinois.

ConjuGon CEO to speak on both coasts

The medical research firm ConjuGon announced on Monday that CEO Christopher Price will speak at two venture-capital conferences later this month. Price will be a presenter at the Bio-Life-Tech Conference in Baltimore on October 13 and the BIO Emerging Company Investor Forum in San Francisco on October 14-15.
“ConjuGon’s technology is drawing a lot of interest on both coasts, as well as in the Midwest and globally,” said Price. “We are honored to be chosen to present at these conferences.”

UW center to make Canadian cancer drug

[Corrected from an earlier version that named the Waisman Center as the developer and Protox as the manufacturer] — Protox Therapeutics, of Vancouver, has announced plans to have the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center, through its Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility, manufacture its potential treatment for prostate cancer, developed at Johns Hopkins University.
“Protox is planning to file an Investigational New Drug application with the FDA for PSA-PA1, our lead product in development, as soon as possible in order to proceed with Phase I Human Trials,” Tom Buckley, chief scientific officer at Protox, said in a statement.

Wisconsin DOA buys Seritis software for data management

Seritis Corporation, a Milwaukee software company, has won a contract to provide the state’s Department of Administration with its FlexChannel software for coordinating and viewing data.
The company employes 12 people and previously sold mostly to the financial services industry before targeting manufacturing and government.
“This purchase helps build our technology sector and provides a product that will end up saving administrative costs while helping the state better manage the vast amounts of information it deals with on a daily basis,” said Wisconsin Representative Jon Richards, a Democrat from Milwaukee.

Schneider rolls its own employment Web site

Schneider National, a Green Bay-based trucking and logistics firm, announced on Monday a new Web site dedicated solely to listing employment positions at the company for interested job-seekers.
The company has announced plans to hire more than 1,000 drivers and operators by the close of 2004. The Web site lists positions at all levels of the company from drivers to upper management and technology posts, as well as sorting them by office location.