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Healthcare
Trendsetters - April 2006
Dr. John May
Disease Lockdown
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Health Through Walls - Founder, Miami
Job: Corporate medical director, Armor Correctional Health Services, the healthcare provider to Broward County's jails.
Demanding sideline: May, 43, flies monthly to such places as Haiti and Jamaica to advise jailers there on sanitary practices, curbing the spread of disease, and to treat inmates. He hits the local flea market for supplies to take with him.
Financial support: His own resources and family and friends.
Organizational hope: Make the non-profit self-sustaining, get grants and more private support.
Ultimate vision: "To be a vehicle for U.S. correctional health professionals to volunteer their time and services in the prison systems of developing countries."
Challenge: "The need's enormous. As long as we know we can make a difference, that keeps us motivated."
Sue Washer
Applied Genetic Technologies
CEO, Gainesville
Protein Provider
"It's every businessperson's dream when you're doing a startup to ride with it all the way to success," says New England native and University of Florida MBA Sue Washer. Applied Genetic, the startup she joined five years ago, has raised $26 million. Using technology developed by its founding professors -- four from UF and one from the University of North Carolina -- Applied's niche is people whose bodies can't make certain proteins. It hopes for a license in 2009 to treat an inherited cause of emphysema that afflicts one in 2,500 Caucasians. Applied also has joined with Massachusetts-based Genzyme to treat age-related macular degeneration, which can cause blindness.
