Memphis company looking to set up vein-reading shop here

Much-touted bioscience firm sees leverage here for its tools

Email | Print By Milt Capps

Jim Phillips

A Memphis company that sells a much-touted technology that can read your veins is looking at establishing a foothold in Nashville's healthcare community.

Jim Phillips, chairman and chief executive officer of Luminetx Corp., told NashvillePost.com Friday he "is very seriously considering some type of presence in Nashville." That could mean establishing a platform for sales, industry partnerships and technology development. Phillips said he expects the market entry of Luminetx to create a splash, perhaps as early as February.

Coming to Nashville would make sense. Nashville is a center for the healthcare industry, Phillips said. And some of privately held Luminetx's investors are also based here. The CEO declined to provide details on those investors.

Luminetx's two products are VeinViewer and Snowflake. The first uses near-infrared light to create a real-time image of a patient's vascular structure and project a map of that structure onto the patient's skin. This minimizes the need for multiple sticks for intravenous injections, blood donations, treatment of varicose veins and other procedures.

Snowflake allows security personnel to verify a person's identity by viewing the structure of veins just below the surface of the palm of their hand. In an industry speech about the Snowflake application a year ago, Phillips said, "In a way, it's like looking at a bar code. We convert your veins to a bar code."

VeinViewer has been hailed as a breakthrough technology in media as diverse as Forbes, Wired and Time. In April, Luminetx began shipping VeinViewer, having earlier established a $25 million sales goal for year one. In November, the company announced it had finished raising $15 million in a third round of capital. It received a key FDA approval, clearing the way for further distribution of the technology.

Phillips' personal record includes founding and chairing the FexEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis; executive duties with Nortel Networks and Motorola; and co-founding SkyTel, at one time the nation's largest messaging company. He also holds patents in cell phone, PDA and data-modem design.

He also co-founded video-surveillance company IPIX Corp. and then sold it. The company went into bankruptcy and he tried to buy back key assets through a court-ordered auction. On Friday, he learned that he had failed in that bid but still secured property rights to ancillary IPIX assets, which he said he believes still hold promise.