Medical industry gets UofL boost

UofL is an anchor tenant in MedCenter One, a 90,000-square-foot facility that opened in late April to house budding medical sciences and technology companies in downtown Louisville.

The building, located at 501 E. Broadway, is the newest addition to the Louisville Medical Center. It was purchased by the City of Louisville for $2.2 million and subleased to the Louisville Medical Center Development Corp., which includes UofL, for $1 a year. The center will help attract new health sciences-related businesses to the area, said Mayor David Armstrong.

Among the facility's first tenants is a health data system company called eMergINT Technologies Inc., which moved its headquarters from Atlanta to Louisville. The company provides technical consulting to researchers and the health-care community, helping them make better use of clinical data.

Its services could be especially beneficial to UofL, said Joel Kaplan, UofL's vice president for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine.

"In order to become a nationally recognized research institution, we must continue to have research, products and procedures that are developed on this campus," Kaplan said.

"Being a part of technology that will improve the quality of all research is a tremendous opportunity for the university."

eMergINT has several contracts with various federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense. In the next two years, eMergINT anticipates adding more than 100 jobs with an average salary of $65,000, said Gil DelGado, company president and chief executive officer.

Several UofL programs, including public health, bioethics, outcomes research and medical informatics, will be housed at MedCenter One, Kaplan said.