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Dana Ryan, RyMed Technologies president and CEO

When Dana Ryan, president and CEO of RyMed Technologies in Franklin, met Victoria and Armando Nahum, the three had a lot to talk about.

The Nahums of Atlanta, Ga., spearhead a nationwide initiative, called the SAFE CARE CAMPAIGN, to bring awareness to and help prevent healthcare-acquired infections. Here’s why: Within one year, three members of the Nahum family contracted hospital-acquired infections at three different U.S. facilities. The Nahum’s son, Josh, involved in a skydiving accident in 2006, died not from his injuries, but from infections he acquired during his medical care.

“They’re on this mission to talk and make people aware, including CEOs and CFOs of hospitals, that we have to address hospital-acquired infections,” Ryan said of the Nahums. “They very much like what we’re doing, and we’re going to be part of the SAFE CARE CAMPAIGN to help them out financially.”

What Ryan’s company is doing is nothing short of reducing catheter-related bloodstream infections, as well as thrombotic catheter occlusions, which are clots containing blood components that impede flow through the catheter. RyMed Technologies developed, manufactures and markets the InVision-Plus® Neutral® I.V. Connector System, an injector port unlike any other on the market.

“Catheter-related blood stream infections are what our technology is driving to zero. We have now hospitals throughout the country reporting zero infections using our product within a catheter bundle,” Ryan said. For example, Memorial Hospital West in Miami recently reported 11 straight months of zero infections in its neonatal intensive care unit; the unit started using the InVision 11 months ago. Last year, the Journal of the Association for Vascular Access published the results of a 15-month study by the nursing team at Sutter Roseville Medical Center in Roseville, Calif. Using the InVision connector and two other products, a patient group suffered no catheter-related bloodstream infections.

Leading academic medical centers are recognizing the beauty of the InVision design and signing on, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Duke University Medical Center and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. “When you start getting these major university hospitals kicking the tire, most of our hospitals now are going straight conversion. They’re not even trialing it,” Ryan said.

“It’s just heartwarming,” he added. “My goal when I first started putting sketches on a piece of paper was to reduce occlusions and infections by 20 percent. That would have been a major step forward in healthcare. What we are now finding are reports of 80 percent or greater reduction in thrombotic occlusions without using heparin, just using saline only.” This is especially significant considering that heparin, a widely used, injectable anticoagulant, has been the subject of recalls due to contamination in the last year.

Another reason the InVision is timely is because the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that, beginning Oct. 1, it will no longer pay for the treatment needed to correct an adverse event, including an infection, that is the hospital’s fault.

Ryan founded RyMed in 1994 and spent “three years of really traveling around this country and abroad to try to figure out what product space I felt I could have an impact,” he said. With about 65 patents around the world on medical devices, Ryan said literature pointed to needle-free IV connectors as a source of infections and occlusions. The use of needle-free connectors skyrocketed in the early 1990s to protect nurses from accidental needle-stick injuries and the potential of subsequent AIDS or hepatitis transmission.

“But unbeknown to the engineers of these products, what were they doing to the patient?” Ryan asked. “What we’ve learned is that, when you use these older technologies and when you disconnect a syringe or connect a syringe or an IV line, you get a huge reflux of blood up the catheter line.” And a valve is activated four times per procedure, offering four reflux opportunities. Dead spaces entrap the blood, prompting a colony of bacteria to grow.

“These products were not designed to prevent migration through the connector. So these bugs go down into the connector and, if there’s blood there, it will start developing blood fibrin, which is the food source. The bugs then latch onto the fibrin, not only on the connector but down the IV catheter because of the blood reflux,” Ryan explained.

The InVision offers two answers to the problem. The first is its design, which creates neutral fluid displacement preventing blood reflux. The InVision also features two microbarriers to protect the fluid pathway.

“We aren’t the only answer. You have to use other technologies in conjunction with us to realistically get to zero,” Ryan acknowledged, then he added that the InVision “works even better than we expected. Now the ball is rolling. We’re finally getting the message out, and people see that we are truly saving lives. That’s pretty gratifying.”

With 23 employees and its headquarters in an 1820 antebellum house just off the Franklin Square, RyMed also boasts an operations office in Austin, Texas. The company injection molds all the proprietary parts in Southern California and assembles the InVision in conjunction with an American company in Juarez, Mexico. RyMed recently engaged Nashville-based Avondale Partners, an independent investment banking firm, for professional advice and to weigh a mezzanine round of financing to continue to grow the company.

“Our exit strategy is most likely either an IPO or we’re going to be bought out by a major company, and I wanted professional advice on that side,” Ryan said.

For now, however, Ryan said the company faces “an uphill battle. We’re up against all the major players in this business. We’re up against the giants of IV therapy, trying to stop us or slow us up. It’s almost like trench warfare.”

For more information, visit www.rymedtech.com.



August 2008

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