Research Meets Real World

Moving Knowledge to the Marketplace
BORDERS' Partnership Forecasts Job Growth

and Expanded State Economy

The UND medical school's BORDERS project and its corporate partner, ProLogic Inc., are expected to be the first tenants when the Center for Life Sciences and Advanced Technologies (COELSAT), a research and commercialization facility, opening in late 2007 on the west end of the UND campus.

The $12-plus million, secured 50,000-square-foot COELSAT facility is the result of a partnership between the UND Research Foundation, the North Dakota Department of Commerce and the Grand Forks Economic Development Corporation.  Groundbreaking took place in December. 

The goal is to create high-wage jobs in new market sectors through the development of research innovations with UND into high-value products that are made in North Dakota.

BORDERS (Biological Organic Radiologic Educational Response System) was launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack with a three-year, $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to train health professionals to respond to man-made and natural disasters.  It is now a collaborative project involving commercialization partner, the UND Research Foundation, and ProLogic, Inc.   

BORDERS personnel created a complete emergency preparedness training program for health care professionals with the DHHS funding which ended in August.

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) brought Pro-Logic and BORDERS together and was successful in securing $1.3 million in 2007 federal appropriations funding for the BORDERS project from the U.S. Department of Defense.    

Linda Olson

"We created a curriculum that would sustain itself beynd the grant period," said Linda Olson, Ed.D. ‘96, BORDERS director and director of special projects development in the Office of Medical Education at the UND medical school, Grand Forks.

"We ended up with a product that has great potential to improve patient care in the military sector and in civilian settings," Olson said. 

In partnership with Virginia-based ProLogic, BORDERS is conducting collaborative research on new products and developing new contracts aimed at providing up-to-date information on giving emergency care to victims of an attack or natural disaster. 

"We take the technology and put it in a format the Army can readily digest," said Paul Maguire, ProLogic's vice president for business development.    

Using the latest information created by BORDERS on an electronic, hand-held tablet, Army personnel can treat patients and store individual medical records that can be accessed by personnel wherever the patient may be transferred.  A kind of electronic field manual, this technology replaces traditional patient charts on paper, greatly reducing or eliminating lost records.

The device, which the Army calls a "joint theater trauma registry (JTTR)," is being used in Baghdad by U.S. military personnel to provide improved treatment and follow-up care for casualties. Outside the military, it's been dubbed an "emergency medical responder tablet," Maguire said.

The welcome advantage of this product is that "we can keep track of who has this (disease condition) and when we get new information, we can contact them," Olson said, especially if, for example, vaccine protection is very limited. 

"New symptomology of a disease can be immediately communicated," said James Petell, Ph.D., UND's director of technology transfer and commercialization and executive director of the UND Research Foundation.   

Maguire likened ProLogic to a "middle man" that "finds customers for technology they (universities) have on the shelf to meet the unfunded requirements of the military," he said. 

"For the federal government, the best way to solve problems is not starting from scratch but taking technology that's 80 percent complete and modifying it a little to suit (their) needs."    

-Pamela D. Knudson

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