FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 15, 2006
For more information contact:

Eugene (Gene) Watson, Program Manager
Wyoming SBIR/STTR Initiative
Phone: 307-742-7162, 307-760-0456 cell

Peregrine Leadership Institute
Olin O. Oedekoven, Ph.D.
801 East Fourth Street, Ste 2
Gillette, Wyoming
Phone: 307-685-1555, Fax: 307-685-0141

CD Solutions, LLC
Chris Tice
Jackson, Wyoming
Phone: 307-732-9852, Fax: 307-732-9853

Non-profit and health care industry look to benefit from grants

CHEYENNE – Innovation in the fields of non-profit agencies as well as home health care are taking shape thanks Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 0 grants awarded this week.

Gillette’s Peregrine Leadership Training Institute and CD Solutions of Jackson Hole were awarded $5,000 to help develop new services and products for human resource training programs and medication administration respectively.

If there were ever a man that has the background to teach leadership and human resource management, it just might be Dr. Olin Oedekoven.

A Brigadier General in the Wyoming National Guard, Dr. Oedekoven is responsible for readiness, training, leadership and force development for the 1,650 members of the Wyoming National Guard. He now wants to take his experience in the public sector and help the non-profit sector in Wyoming. Dr. Oedekoven and former Powder River Coal Vice President Cliff Knesel have partnered to form Peregrine Leadership Institute in Gillette, the latest recipient of an SBIR Phase 0 grant.

The two hope to develop a training and human resources program for non-profit agencies using a $5,000 grant they were awarded this week through the Wyoming Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Initiative (WSSI).

“When my partner and I started this company, our values included trying to offer free training for non-profits and boards,” said Dr. Oedekoven. “In the non-profit sector there is a need for employee training, but the grants that the organizations receive are so specific, the leaders and the board of these organizations have to get creative to be able to afford training in the sorts of soft skills we would like to provide for either free or at a greatly reduced cost.”

Dr. Oedekoven, who is also a wildlife biologist, says Peregrine’s plan is to offer courses over the internet that are both facilitated by leaders, as well as self-paced. The soft skills that Peregrine hopes to concentrate on include: communication, team building, giving performance reviews, team leading, human resources management, decision making along with tactical and strategic planning.

“Supervisors at non-profits are often picked based on their skills in their field and put into a management positions,” said Oedekoven. “Sometimes they do not necessarily have the soft skills to do that job. That is what we are targeting.”

Partners in CareTrust Infusions, a home health care company in Casper, as well as CD Solutions in Jackson, Chris Tice and Dave Pestotnik were awarded a $5,000 Phase 0 grant to develop a device that could have huge implications in the health care and military field care arenas.

The duo will attempt to develop a device that will allow the mixing of medications into a disposable elastomeric bag without a sterile environment. Elastomeric bags are devices that administer IV medications without the help of gravity.

The Click and Link Infuser allows the medications to be mixed in an apparatus instead of having to be mixed by a pharmacist in a sterile environment inside a sterile mixing hood complete with an air filtration system. Vials of medication would be attached to the device, which would puncture the seal on top of the vial and mix it into a disposable home pump.
“This will allow a nurse to mix the medication in the home and still have the mixing come in a sterile setting,” said Tice.

The home health care impact will involve fewer steps and cost in the process of mixing medications, as well as offer more places to mix the meds. Tice points out this device could be used in military hospitals in the field to administer IV as well as nursing homes, or even to shorten stays in the hospitals for ailments like staph infections, which require IV antibiotics. Those drugs could be now be mixed by home health nurses.

The SBIR Phase 0 Program helps Wyoming companies develop competitive proposals for the federal SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The SBIR Phase 0 program is a project of the Wyoming SBIR/STTR Initiative (WSSI). The WSSI initiative is funded by the Wyoming Business Council and gives out $120,000 in Phase 0 grants each year.

The federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs make up the WSSI alliance and provide more than $2 billion annually in Research and Development (R&D) grants and contracts to qualified small businesses.

Eleven federal agencies are required by law to provide these funds by setting aside 2.5 percent of their annual extra-mural R&D budgets for use exclusively by U.S. small businesses for new product R&D. Hence, these programs provide a unique source of start-up and seed capital for small businesses to develop new innovative product concepts.

The mission of the Wyoming Business Council is to facilitate the economic growth of Wyoming. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.wyomingbusiness.org.

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