Medical Device Daily National Editor

The "Mile High" city will attract the attention of the nation this evening as Sen. Barack Obama accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for U.S. president at Denver's Invesco field. And Colorado is using that attention to boost as well its status and strength in bioscience and med-tech, with the recent rollout of metrics underlining that strength.

The primary images of Colorado have been of mountain vistas, skiing and quality-of-life draws for tourism. As it turns out, these also are among the key strengths that produce an active entrepreneurial environment.

Besides citing the state's solid array of colleges and technical schools, Rick Jory, vice chairman of the Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA; Denver), emphasizes the state's invigorating quality of life as an important workforce draw. He told Medical Device Daily that the result is ready access to "good, solid, knowledgeable workers, people that know how to learn – we have those at our disposal."

Jory is CEO of Sandhill Scientific (Highlands Ranch), a developer of gastrointestinal diagnostic devices, and so can report from the grassroots concerning the region's "work ethic and the entrepreneurial spirit [combined with] the fact that many of us came from the same roots in medical device education and skill-building."

Following are some of the metrics currently being underlined by the CBSA concerning the state's biosciences assets:

In June, the Denver/Boulder region was included in the 20 Best Places for Biotech list by Genome Technology.

The journal cited a total of 10,000 employees in the state's biotech industry and the recent assignment of the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center as a bioscience park. The park is located in Aurora – which until the start of the new century was simply a commuter community for Denver, with little or no industrial assets, but over the past 10 years has developed a beehive of medical and research resources.

The park teams research facilities for the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and Hospital Complex with the Children's Hospital, along with new incubator and office spaces. Park planners project that by 2010, employment at the Fitzsimons site will reach 19,000, a combination of healthcare providers and researchers.

Additionally, in 2006, biotech giant Amgen (Thousand Oaks, California) committed to funding a $150 million expansion of its manufacturing plant in Boulder.

• Families USA (New York), in its recent Global Health Initiative Report, ranked Colorado as fourth among states generating the most per-dollar funding activity from the National Institutes of Health. For every dollar of NIH funding, Colorado generated $2.34 in business activity. In 2007 Colorado received about $336 million in NIH funding generating a total of $787 million, the report said.

The 10 states ranked as generating the most per-dollar economic activity of NIH funding were Texas ($2.49), Illinois ($2.43), California ($2.40), Georgia ($2.36), Colorado ($2.34), Pennsylvania ($2.32), Tennessee ($2.32), Utah ($2.30) Ohio ($2.29), and New Jersey ($2.26).

In the recent State Technology and Science Index by Milken Institute (Santa Monica, California), Colorado placed in the top five of all five index categories. It moved ahead of California in the new overall rankings, and Milken ranked Colorado second in the concentration of scientists and engineers.

The index looks at 77 indicators in five major components: Research and Development Inputs, Risk Capital and Entrepreneurial Infrastructure, Human Capital Investment, Technology and Science Work Force, and Technology Concentration and Dynamism.

An executive summary of the index noted that Colorado had an overall score that put it in third place, just two index points behind Maryland.

Chris Shapard, deputy director of the CBSA, said that, collectively, these ratings and rankings underline the view that Colorado is "a fertile state for bioscience and technology initiatives," noting that the above rankings come from independent, objective sources.

Shapard credited Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter for pushing an awareness of the state's med-tech/bioscience assets.

"We're using the governor an awful lot these days," Shapard told MDD. "His office has been very willing to go to trade shows and provide incentives for bioscience companies."

She also reported that CBSA is readying a series of road shows on both coasts, "meeting with investors to talk about this industry.

"It's very exciting [in Colorado] right now," Shapard said.

To further underline the state's assets for driving entrepreneurship in healthcare, she said the CBSA will hold the Rocky Mountain Healthcare Conference next year, on Sept. 17, pitched to investors and focused on the bioscience/med-tech environment of the state — especially "showing off" up to 30 companies from the Rocky Mountain region.

In recent med-tech news from the state, Covidien's (Mansfield, Massachusetts) manufacturing facility in Gunbarrel reported the addition of 251 jobs this year, with more to come in the coming fiscal year, beginning next month.

It also has a 60,000-square-foot addition under construction, expanding the facility's total footprint to 460,000 square feet. Completion is expected by year-end.

Covidien also operates two businesses in Boulder, Energy-based Devices (formerly Valleylab) and Respiratory & Monitoring Solutions (formerly Nellcor Puritan Bennett).