Lineus Medical adds IV blood-draw technology to its product line
by November 20, 2017 7:41 am 317 views
Lineus Medical of Fayetteville has acquired BVAD Tech, a company founded by Lineus Medical’s founder and CEO Spencer Jones.
BVAD’s first product is a dual lumen peripheral IV catheter, composed of two tubes, where one is used as a vessel to administer medication or fluids, and the secondary lumen can draw uncontaminated blood draws, according to the company.
The product uses bifurcated lumen technology, patented by Jones in Europe and patent-pending in the U.S., India, Japan and China.
BVAD is designed to allow multiple blood draws from one stick. The company cited the standards of medical care in diabetes, published by the American Diabetes Association in 2014, as showing the average diabetic patient, for example, in a hospital receives daily blood draws, a minimum of four finger pricks and one vein puncture each day.
“Sticking patients like pin cushions at all hours of the day and night doesn’t create an optimal healing environment,” Jones said in a Lineus Medical press release. “BVAD is designed to drastically reduce the number of needle sticks and finger pricks that patients have to endure.”
Blood sampling capability is common with central lines, but sampling from indwelling peripheral catheters, which are much smaller and cheaper, has not been allowed because of the potential for contamination of the blood sample, an issue that the company said is resolved through the use of two lumens.
“BVAD expands and complements Lineus Medical’s vascular access product offering for the $1.3 billion global peripheral IV market,” according to the company. Its other product is SafeBreak Vascular, which attaches to an IV line and prevents damage by creating a “controlled separation” when force is applied, according to the company’s website.
Jones and co-founder David DePoyster, a healthcare sales and marketing instructor at the University of Central Arkansas and vice president of health systems at OptumRx, met during the 2014 ARK Challenge business accelerator in Little Rock, where BVAD won first place and $150,000 in prize money.