FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Jessica Martin Eckerly, Forward BIOLABS; Former regent Atwell urges pause on UW branch closures

August 9, 2024

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Jessica Martin Eckerly, CEO and co-founder of Forward BIOLABS in Madison.

She discusses a new state-backed initiative called Forward Memberships that aims to help more entrepreneurs in the biohealth sector advance research and develop their companies. Thanks to $190,000 in funding from WEDC, the lab is providing year-long memberships to startups with different options for companies with varying needs.

“It’s nice to be able to provide a variety of the memberships that we offer, and to be able to cover the cost of those with the grant,” she said. “What this does is enable startups to stretch those invested dollars … because they don’t have to kind of factor in the cost of our membership for the year.”

The nonprofit Forward BIOLABS offers a fully equipped scientific facility with tools for cell cultures, proteins, genomics and more, along with infrastructure and operational support. These resources help early-stage companies hit the ground running rather than spending large sums on this equipment and a facility lease.

The organization also helps startups connect with suppliers and service providers as well as investors, Martin Eckerly said.

“So every day is different here, because it depends on what the needs are of the companies,” she said. “But the fact that we’re here on-site, all day every day and as needed, is feedback that we hear really great things on. We are here when they need us to support them, in the way they need to be supported.”

She connects this initiative to the broader Wisconsin Biohealth Tech Hub effort, which landed $49 million in federal funding to advance several projects focused on this sector. Martin Eckerly also emphasizes the program’s focus on underrepresented groups.

“It’s a really great statement of not just WEDC but Wisconsin’s support for biohealth startups, and in particular, women- and minority-founded startups,” she said, noting half of the 10 memberships being awarded will go to these groups. “That’s something I’m particularly excited about.”

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

See more on the initiative.

— Former Universities of Wisconsin Regent Robert Atwell questioned whether the closure of four branch campuses this year would actually help the universities’ financial situation.

Two additional two-year campuses are slated to close in 2025 due to enrollment challenges.

“Stop closing campuses until we have a comprehensive decision about how we’re going to invest in the future of the state,” Atwell said yesterday. “Are we going to subsidize inefficiency? Or are we going to fix, and then invest?”

Atwell, who was appointed to the Board of Regents by former GOP Gov. Scott Walker in 2017, also criticized the pay differential between UW faculty and faculty at peer institutions.

During yesterday’s Legislative Council Study Committee on the Future of the University of Wisconsin System meeting, members heard from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, UW President Jay Rothman, and UW-Madison Economics Professor Ananth Seshadri.

Rothman argued the campuses need more resources and questioned where the money to increase pay would come from if the state did not provide more financial support. He also presented data showing that compared to peer universities, UW — other than the Madison campus — pays assistant faculty 5% less, associate faculty 13% less and full faculty 19% less.

Presenting to the committee, Rothman highlighted decreasing enrollment numbers, financial support and public perception as current key challenges to the UW system. Total enrollment reached a peak of 156,039 students in the 2009-2010 academic year and declined to 136,643 in the 2023-2024 academic year, Legislative Fiscal Bureau fiscal analyst Erin Probst told the committee.

Rothman cited a Wisconsin Policy Forum study showing that Wisconsin currently ranks 43rd out of the 50 states in terms of public funding provided to its four-year universities, and called for legislators to increase these funding levels to bring Wisconsin “up to the middle” among states.

“The universities of Wisconsin remain nationally and internationally respected, but a lack of adequate resources will eventually undermine our well deserved reputation for academic excellence. I spent my entire life in this state—that’s not the Wisconsin I grew up in, and it is not the recipe for long term success, in my humble opinion, for future generations of Wisconsin,” Rothman said.

Gov. Tony Evers has said he will seek an $800 million budget increase for UW in his next budget proposal.

Pointing out demographic changes in Wisconsin, including the aging population and declining birth rate, Rothman said he aimed to increase the annual number of graduates from the UW system in part to meet the demand for skilled workers.

Rothman also spoke about initiatives intended to expand access to a UW education, including the direct admit program. Beginning in fall 2025, the program would directly admit qualifying high school juniors and seniors performing at the top of their classes to 10 participating UW schools without the students needing to apply. Additionally, Rothman said he hoped to revive the Wisconsin Tuition Promise, which was a one-time program run in 2023 “covering the cost of tuition and fees for eligible undergraduate students” at all campuses except UW-Madison, according to UW’s website.

“We will need state support,” Rothman said.

— A new UW-Madison study finds patients are coming into hospitals with increasingly large medical history files approaching the size of some classic novels. That makes it harder for doctors to conduct a full review.

The study, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, analyzed data from about 731,000 patient visits between 2006 and January 2023 at two UW Health emergency rooms. These included the older University Hospital, and East Madison Hospital, which opened in 2015.

Researchers found that while the median patient in 2006 had five notes in their medical record, that number had ballooned to 359 notes by 2022.

The study’s title includes the phrase “Call me Dr Ishmael” — referencing Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” — because one in five patients in 2023 had a chart the size of the classic novel, including more than 206,000 words. The university’s release notes nearly 4% of patients have charts as large as “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy, which has more than 506,000 words.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Brian Patterson of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, says this trend is making it more difficult for doctors to review patient records that contain important information about their medical history.

“Prior to 2010, reading a chart biopsy for the average patient involved skimming several notes, not easy but possible within a few minutes,” Patterson said in a release from the university. “This task has become more burdensome, to the point where it is often impossible to get a handle on a patient’s history within the time constraints of an emergency visit.”

The study notes clinicians need better ways to analyze these expanding patient records. Study co-author Frank Liao, senior director of digital health and emerging technologies at UW Health, says AI large language models could play a role.

“These large language models can be trained to generate concise and relevant summaries of patient data, allowing physicians to quickly grasp essential information without sifting through extensive notes, potentially reducing the cognitive load on the physician,” Liao said.

See more in the release.

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— The MMAC’s June economic trends report for the Milwaukee area finds “some cause for optimism” as multiple measures of unemployment all declined over the year.

“Yet continuing local job declines, a weaker national job picture and recent stock market declines add uncertainty to near-term growth prospects,” Bret Mayborne, MMAC’s vice president of economic research, said in yesterday’s release.

Eight of the 23 economic indicators tracked by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce showed an upward trend in June, the same number as from the group’s revised May report.

Meanwhile, seven of the region’s 10 major industry sectors lost jobs over the year in June, led by a 5.9% decline in information and a 3.2% decline in professional and business services. Among those that added jobs, government gained 2.9% and education and health services gained 2%.

Still, MMAC notes unemployment indicators “showed signs of strength” for the month, as the number of unemployed decreased 5% over the year to 30,300. That led to the first year-over-year decline in the seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate in five months, according to the report. June’s rate of 3.7% was 0.2 percentage points below the previous June rate, and below the national rate of 4.3%.

See the release.

— Two Brookfield companies have paid more than $10 million to resolve alleged customs violations related to importing Chinese goods, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

Precision Cable Assemblies, Inc. sells wire harnesses, wiring and battery cables while Global Engineered Products, Inc. sells power distribution equipment.

The companies and their principals Ryan Schmus and Richard Horky made the payments after allegedly submitting false invoices to Customs and Border Patrol that “significantly undervalued” goods imported from China between 2016 and November 2021, according to the DOJ release.

The two companies allegedly falsified invoices from Chinese suppliers to reduce the prices of the goods, generally by 70%, and gave them to a customs broker that submitted them to Customs without knowing about the alterations. This allowed the companies to avoid millions of dollars in duties on the imported products.

Global Engineered Products initially paid Customs about $4.2 million in duties linked to the alleged undervaluation scheme, and defendants paid another $6 million to the U.S. government to “fully resolve” its liability for the duties evasion, the release shows.

See more in the release.

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