Networking in Las Vegas for the Week Ending April 5, 2014

Attended the Touro University Research Day at which Dr. Chowdhury Ahsan, a Clinical Professor of Medicine with the University of Nevada School of Medicine and the Director of Cardiovascular Research at University Medical Center, was the featured speaker. Dr. Mitch Foreman, Founding Dean of Touro University Nevada, opened the lecture, saying that Touro is going to continue to push research at the University.  Dr. Mahboob Qureshi, Director of Research introduced Dr. Ahsan.  The title of his talk was "Global Perspective of Acute Coronary Syndrome and the Significance of Pharmacogenetics in Therapeutic Intervention". He primarily talked about how different ethnic populations react to differently to drugs which will greatly affect their medical outcomes especially when receiving angioplasty and stents. These patients are given anticoagulants and antiplatelets which work differently in south asians than caucasians. The rest of the day was student presentations. The students and faculty had over  

30 poster presentations of their research. This type of research is the basis for new treatment methods, devices and drugs and helps build the medical science community in Southern Nevada.

Attended the Startup Grind meeting, featuring Leith Martin, CEO of Equiinet. Anthony Hurtado of Raster Media opened the meeting. Michael Terpin, Founder of the Las Vegas Chapter of Startup Grind (over 60 chapters around the world) began the meeting with an interview of Leith. Equiinet provides phone, internet, security, backup, storage and other services in one box. The customer pays for the monthly service. One of their advantages is that the design of their system is that voice has priority over everything else which allows the phone quality to be clear. The price of their system is competitive and they are seeing tremendous success in Nevada, California and Phoenix. Leith said that their success is due to their business model. Although all these services are already available, packaging them together in a simple box that's installed at the customers office with a reasonable monthly price has broken open the market. Dominic Marrocco is also one of the co-founders. Leith and Dominic met at the Harvard Business School. Over sixty people attended the talk including Daniel Braisted, Steve Miller, Mark Cenicola and others. 

Attended the workshop on licensing medical marijuana in the city of Las Vegas. The event was moved to the city hall chambers due to the anticipated crowd. The council chambers filled up to the point that it was standing room only (300 attendees). The city licencing department was having this hearing to receive feedback on their proposed regulations. The meeting was very well handled by the city. The audience had a number of suggestions to improve the 35 pages of regulations. The audience was half entrepreneurs, a quarter patients and the rest, lawyers and contractors. The city will continue to take feedback as it finishes the licensing regulations by the end of the month.

Attended the Henderson Chamber of Commerce panel on education. On the panel were Shelley Berkley, Touro; Renee Coffman, Roseman; Bart Patterson, Nevada State College and Rick Smith, RDS Properties, moderator. Henderson Mayor Andy Hafen started the meeting noting that Henderson is home to 10 universities and colleges. 

Bart Patterson, President of Nevada State College talked about how his school is serving many who are the first in their family to attend college, including a large minority population. Their class sizes are smaller at a limit of 21. The college works closely with its students; the nursing students have a 100% pass rate this last year on their boards. Nevada State College sits on 500 acres and is planning to expand. They are looking for public-private partnerships with businesses.  

Renee Coffman, President & Co-founder of Roseman, talked about the Roseman teaching method. Each student takes one class at a time, six hour per day and is required to achieve 90% on all exams and tests. Roseman expects and demand proficiency of the material. Its pharmacy students consistently achieve 100% pass rates on their board exams. Roseman has expanded into Orthodontics. They have also set up a clinic at which they have state-of-the art equipment and students seeing over 70 appointments per day. Their pass rates have been at 100%. Roseman has added research space for Pharmacy and Dentistry over 40,000 square feet. They have obtained the Englestad building at the Nevada Cancer Institute and are supporting a team of researchers that are working on cancer, diabetes, prostrate, obesity and other areas.  Roseman plans to open its Medical School in 2017 and has already hired its Dean, Mark Penn, MD. They are also going to add new clinics to treat patients.

Shelley Berkley, CEO & Senior Provost of Touro University Western Division, talked about how Touro is meeting the needs of the community such as graduating nearly twice as many doctors (135) than the University of Nevada School of Medicine (70), developing a physician assistant (PA) program - over 1100 apply for 60 slots, developing physical therapists and occupational therapists, over 600 apply for 40 slots, developing an autism clinic which already has a nine-month waiting list, developing an active aging clinic for geriatric issues and plans to develop a Mental Health Clinic. Touro has saved the cities and countries money by having Touro medical students provide medical services to Shade Tree shelter and also to homeless veterans and is expanding the program to the general homeless. She said that Touro and Roseman are working together to strengthen the medical education in Southern Nevada. One of the main issues is Residencies for doctors. Without an expanded Residency program which must be funded by the state, Nevada will lose from 25% to 50% of the doctors that it trains. Nevada is 48th in doctors per capita in the United States.  

Councilwoman Gerri Schroder, David Dahan, James York, Luis Valera and over 150 people were in attendance at the event. 

Attended the Las Vegas Heals Medical Mixer at McFaddens. Over 100 were at the mixer. The mixer had doctors and individuals from different medical related industries. It's one of the friendliest mixers that I attend. People are eager to talk about their companies and issues. It's a great cross section of the medical community. Dr. Bob Odell's Neuropathy & Pain Centers had a booth on their innovative method to treat neuropathy, fibromyalgia and chronic pain using electrical currents. 

Finally, on Friday, I attended the Dominic Marrocco Southern Nevada Business Plan Competition. Debbie Donaldson, Las Vegas Business Press, opened the meeting. Dominic Marrocco, a primary sponsor of the competition, spoke about how impressive the business plans were. He also gave words of encouragement to the large group students that attended. The winner was Skyworks which developed UAVs for use in buildings such as flying in burning buildings to search for people. Runner ups had projects such as helping Chinese students, stem cells and brain exercises. Over 80 attended the events - many entrepreneurs, angel investors - Fred Cox, Ross Williams, Eugene Wong, Bill Botts, the law firm of Howard & Howard, Business Dean, Brent Hathaway, PhD, Oliver Hemmers, PhD, Ismail Onat, Michael Maier and many others.

John Laub