Visicu (Baltimore), a company focused on improved monitoring of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), has filed with the SEC for an initial public offering of 6 million shares to raise up to $84 million.

The company said it will use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including increased marketing efforts, R&D and potential acquisitions. The IPO is expected to begin trading later this week via underwriters Morgan Stanley.

Founded in March 1998 by two intensivists affiliated with Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore), Visicu has developed the eICU Critical Care Program, an advanced remote monitoring system to improve patient treatment in the ICU by leveraging scarce critical care staff and enabling more frequent patient monitoring to provide earlier intervention when necessary.

An eICU Center consists of direct data, video and audio links with ICU patient rooms and an eCareManager suite of software products. In the eICU Center, intensive care physicians, or intensivists, and critical care nurses use multiple screens at eCareManager workstations to monitor real-time data, current visual status, care plan, diagnostic results and treatment history for each patient.

The company says that the program enables one intensivist and two critical care nurses to manage up to 100 patients and direct on-site caregivers, with the goal of improving compliance with current ICU best practices, shorten recovery times and length of stay, reduce costs and increase revenue.

It reports that use of the program by a customer reduced mortality rates in its ICUs by about 27% and reduced average length of ICU stay by about 16%. These improvements, it said, were shown to reduce costs-per-case by about 25% and increase the hospital's average contribution margin per case by about 56%.

The company provides its customers with a perpetual license of its software, clinical and technical implementation services and ongoing support services under a three-year support agreement. Customers pay license and implementation fees in installments prior to and within a short time following program implementation and pay support service fees throughout the three-year support agreement.

Renaissance Capital praised Visicu for helping hospitals grapple with a shortage of experts for ICUs.

“We believe that Visicu is an exciting emerging growth company ready to take off,“ Renaissance Capital said in its featured IPO column.

In its SEC filing the company noted among its key risks that a competitor, iMDsoft (Needham, Massachusetts), has requested that the U.S. Patent Office declare an interference and revocation of Visicu's single issued U.S. patent and a patent with identical claims issued to iMDsoft. Also, Cerner (Kansas City, Kansas) has filed suit against the company seeking invalidity of the company's patent.

The company has incurred about $34.9 million in accumulated debt as of Dec. 31, 2005.

Biomaterials firm SyntheMed (Oceanport, New Jersey) reported completing a private placement garnering $6 million in gross proceeds.

The placement involved issuance of 15 million shares of common stock at 40 cents a share to a consortium of European and U.S. investors.

Robert Hickey, company president and CEO, said the proceeds of the financing “will allow us to move aggressively toward the commercialization of Repel-CV Adhesion Barrier and the advancement of our other product development projects.“ Hickey added that 2006 “should be a significant year for our company with the anticipated launch of Repel-CV in major international markets and the projected mid-year completion of the Repel-CV multicenter, pivotal clinical trial, the results of which we plan to submit to the FDA in connection with an application for marketing approval in the US.“

Post-operative adhesion formation is a prevalent complication experienced in the approximately 1 million open heart surgical procedures performed worldwide on an annual basis.

SyntheMed said that Repel-CV could become “the first adhesion barrier approved by the FDA for use in cardiac surgery which could represent a $250 million annual worldwide market opportunity.“

In other financing activity:

• Health management company U.S. Preventive Medicine (McKinney, Texas) reported closing its first investment round with the sale of $4.5 million in company securities.

The proceeds are being utilized to roll out its platform of prevention, behavior modification and health management services, targeting employers and consumers, according to Christopher Fey, CEO and chairman.

“Through our hospital and physician group partnerships, we believe our turnkey Centers for Preventive Medicine system, including our delivery of localized health management services, can become a national market leader,“ Fey said. “For consumers, we bring true customer service to the delivery of healthcare. For employers, we bring enhanced productivity and reduced medical costs. For hospitals and physician groups, we bring a new, customer centric model that can reenergize the current healthcare system from one of 'sick care' to one of 'preventive care.'“

Fey continued: “The attractiveness of our patent pending business model is that we utilize the existing assets, resources and personnel of hospitals and physician groups, in combination with our turnkey system, to deliver sophisticated preventive and care management services creating a great value proposition for consumers, employers, hospitals and physicians. Ultimately, U.S. preventive medicine could become the premier nationwide distribution outlet for innovative, clinically appropriate preventive, behavior modification and health management services.“

• Pediatrix Medical Group (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) reported board authorization of a 2-for-1 split of the company's common stock. Shareholders of record at the close of business on April 13, will receive one additional share of Pediatrix stock for each share held, with shares payable on April 27, 2006.

Pediatrix's board authorized amendment of the company's Articles of Incorporation to expand authorized shares from 50 million to 100 million. Pediatrix had roughly 24.1 million shares of common stock outstanding on March 1.

Pediatrix bills itself as the nation's leading provider of newborn, maternal/fetal and pediatric subspecialty services.

• Health Management Associates (HMA, Naples, Florida) reported that it will offer $400 million of senior notes maturing 2016. HMA said it intends to use the net proceeds from the sale of the notes to repay amounts outstanding under its senior revolving credit facility.

Merrill Lynch & Co. and Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking are managing the sale of the Senior Notes.

HMA operates non-urban general acute care hospitals in communities situated throughout the U.S.