Avail™ Medical, a global provider of transportable medical operating rooms today announced the completion of their acquisition of Tractus Medical, a California corporation holding ownership of intellectual property in the field of mobile operating rooms.
“The purchase of Tractus accomplishes a critical milestone for Avail as the acquired intellectual property holdings firmly establish Avail as the only US-based corporation with the rights to manufacture and distribute transportable operating rooms,” said Jeffrey Merino, CEO of Avail Medical. “We are always interested in adding robust patents to our portfolio, but this intellectual property is especially important as it eliminates competition in our target United States market,” Merino said.
“We at Tractus are very excited about the acquisition. Even in the early stages of the process, we realized that the management team at Avail excels in the expertise necessary to propel mobile operating room technology to the next level,” said Steve Rudy, MD, COO of Tractus Medical.
The acquisition allows Avail to tighten their strategic focus on the California hospital retrofit market required by State Bill 1953 The Hospital Seismic Safety Act. The Act was legislated in 1994 following the Northridge earthquake. This quake caused 23 hospitals to suspend some or all of their services and resulted in more than $3 billion in hospital-related damages. The Act requires all general acute-care inpatient buildings at risk of collapsing during a strong earthquake to be rebuilt, retrofitted, or closed. Initial evaluation reports indicate that 2,700 general acute-care inpatient hospital buildings at 470 hospitals are required to meet the mandates of the Act. The current cost estimate to comply with the requirements of SB 1953 is $24 billion. Avail is perfectly positioned to offer these hospitals a method of continuing their surgical services and generating surgical revenue during these lengthy and difficult retrofits.
“Even upgrading a surgical suite can cost as much as several million dollars and take as long as 18 months. During that time the hospital is losing revenue, surgical cases, and in some cases, even surgeons to other competiting hospitals,” said Malinda Mitchell, recently retired CEO of Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, CA. “As soon as I walked into the mobile OR, its value in eliminating these issues and in increasing OR capacity at busy medical centers was obvious,” said Mitchell.
“Adding the Tractus intellectual property to our portfolio has increased the value of Avail for our shareholders, while enhancing our credibility in the medical community. We are now in a unique position to offer our customers a temporary or permanent solution to their operating room capacity issues,” said Anita Chambers, Chief Strategic Officer of Avail. “Additionally, the broad claims within the acquired intellectual property provide Avail with a definite strategic advantage in developing long-term relationships with disaster relief and governmental organizations such as Homeland Security, FEMA, and the military.
About Avail™ Medical
Avail Medical is a California corporation specializing in the design, development, manufacture, and distribution of rapid deployment operating room facilities. The Corporation was formed in 2004 and holds the only issued US patents for an expandable mobile operating room with pre-operative and post-operative areas. This unit has been utilized for virtually every type of surgery with the exception of open heart and complex neurosurgery requiring large microscopes. The unit meets DOT requirements for standard transportation over US roads; it can also be transported via military aircraft such as the C-5A or C-17. The unit is designed to function as a stand-alone surgery center or an adjunct to an existing hospital. Existing units built under this design have successfully been used at hospitals, correctional institutions, governmental facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, and in field situations.