MDNews - San Antonio

surgeons Robert Campbell, MD, Melvin Smith, MD (deceased), and Kaye Wilkins, MD, of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Children's Hospital (2008). "I am very happy to accept the Julio Palmaz Award," says Moerner, "as this recognizes the lifelong efforts of me, my col- laborators and my colleagues in the field to study single mol- ecules and to develop useful applications such as super-resolu- tion microscopy." BIOMED SA MARKS 10 YEARS OF CHAMPIONING SAN ANTONIO AS A CITY OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH; THE ORGANI- ZATION WILL PURSUE ADDITIONAL REVENUE TO ACCELERATE GROWTH OF CITY'S LEADING ECONOMIC SECTOR BioMed SA, the organization charged with advancing and pro- moting San Antonio's healthcare and bioscience sector, celebrates 10 years in operation this year and is marking the milestone by ramping up efforts to raise the San Antonio biomedical industry's profile nationwide. BioMed SA is a nonprofit, membership-based organization, supported in part by the city of San Antonio. It was founded in late 2005 by former Mayor Henry Cisneros and the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce to organize and promote San Antonio's substantial biomedical assets. Its first full year of operation was 2006. The organization's 10-year history has coincided with tremen - dous growth in the sector, and as the sector has expanded so too has BioMed SA's role of championing San Antonio as a City of Science and Health. "BioMed SA is the advocate for San Antonio's largest economic sector," explains BioMed SA Chair Kenneth P. Trevett. "It promotes interactions between parties that have common interests but may not know one another. It assists the city and county in business attraction, retention and expansion. And, it raises the collective visibility of the entire sector around the nation and world. All of these important activities require resources." Trevett says that to continue to move the sector forward, the or - ganization must pursue new revenue sources such as foundation and corporate grants and donations from individuals. "BioMed SA is marking 2015 with a new pursuit of resources to further enhance our effectiveness by allowing us to increase our two-person staff and marketing budget to more adequately address the needs and opportunities of this vibrant and growing sector," says Trevett. BioMed SA President Ann Stevens calls the pursuit of new revenue sources "a major step forward as we build on the accomplishments of the past 10 years and enter our second decade of service to the community as a more mature organization with greater responsibilities and growing expectations for advocating sector growth, promoting innovation and fostering collaboration." Some of BioMed SA's key accomplishments in its first 10 years include: + Creation of the annual Julio Palmaz Award for Innovation in Healthcare and the Biosciences. The award, named after stent inventor Julio Palmaz, MD, from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, recognizes local and national innovators in order to build awareness of San Antonio's biomedical assets and track record of innovation. + An instrumental role in San Antonio's 2009 recruitment of the Medtronic Diabetes Therapy and Education Center, which was reported to be one of the largest economic development projects in the nation during the height of the recession. Medtronic was the first of several company attractions in which BioMed SA played a key role. + BioMed SA's comprehensive healthcare and bioscience industry "Asset Initiative," which identified five key disease areas in which San Antonio has assets and expertise of national or world-class caliber. These assets are being leveraged to generate future growth and higher visibility for the city's biomedical sector. + Attraction of the World Stem Cell Summit to San Antonio in December 2014 by consciously leveraging the collective strengths of San Antonio's civilian and military medical communities in the emerging area of regenerative medicine. ■ M D N E W S . CO M ■ MD NEWS San Antonio | 1 3

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