High hopes INRange for company
Altoona firm optimistic about growth during next 3 yearsBy Walt Frank, wfrank@altoonamirror.com
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While many businesses are closing or cutting jobs, an Altoona firm is on the rise and planning for substantial growth.
"Our future plans are to grow and expand the business and keep it centralized here in Altoona," said Christopher Bossi, president of INRange Systems Inc. "We believe we will grow substantially over the next three years."
INRange recently moved into the former Team Motors building at 115 Union Ave. from its offices at Lakemont Park and Regency Square, nearly doubling its space to about 12,000 square feet.
"We knew we are going to be growing, so we decided to combine both offices into one building," said Cathy L. Caracciolo, vice president-product development.
Founded in 2001, INRange is a privately owned company that created the Electronic Medication Management Assistant, or EMMA, to deliver and monitor drug therapy compliance.
Bossi said EMMA was created as an electronic nurse by cardiologist Mary Anne Papp of Erie. The company started its Altoona operations - comprised of Bossi and Caracciolo at the time - in 2003 in the former M&T Bank building on 12th Avenue.
According to a company brochure, EMMA is a Web-enabled remote medication management system that remotely delivers, manages and monitors a patient's drug therapy in an outpatient setting.
The electronic nurse is programmed remotely by a pharmacist. Within minutes, the medication dosing schedule or adjustments are sent electronically to the medication delivery unit.
The patient's prescriptions and refills are packaged in standard-sized blister cards, which are dispensed to the patient.
When it is time for patients to take their medications, the unit emits an audible and visual alert. When activated by the patient, the medications are selected from the cards and released into the delivery tray.
At this point, INRange has manufactured 30 EMMA units but expects to ship out about 2,500 units in 2009, Bossi said.
"One of our primary customers is the U.S. Army for the treatment of wounded warriors coming back from Iraq," he said. "We are also talking to various state Departments of Health for the treatment of the mentally ill. We are starting to talk with long-term facilities in Pennsylvania."
With additional contracts expected soon, INRange - which employs 27 workers - plans to add 52 jobs during the next three years.
To move forward, INRange recently received $4 million in funding led by Hopewell Ventures and an additional undisclosed capital investor.
Previous funding was supplied by the Ben Franklin Partnership and the Life Sciences Greenhouse of Central Pennsylvania, which provided about $1 million during a three-year period.
"We were an early investor in the company. We have a role to drive economic development in the life sciences field," said Steve Carpenter, vice president of venture operations for Life Sciences. "INRange was one we felt had a promising technology. We watched them evolve the technology into something that looks real promising now."
The EMMA unit costs about $7,000, and the next step is to develop EMMA II, which Bossi expects will be available for in-home use in 2010 or 2011.
Bossi and Caracciolo are optimistic about the future of the company.
"Our future is extremely bright. Our competition is really manual nurses managing medication for the patients," Bossi said. "With President [Barack] Obama's plan to utilize technology and improve health care, we fit into that model really, really well. We are just getting started."
Caracciolo agreed.
"We are coming into this at a great time. Hopefully, we will always be one step ahead," Caracciolo said. "Once we get [EMMA] out there and recognized as a household name, there will be a very high demand for it."
Mirror Staff Writer Walt Frank is at 946-7467.
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02-02-09 12:44 PM
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INRange did layoff about 13 people in November.
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