ROARING FORWARD
Rob Brady needs a PR person. "I needed that person yesterday," jokes the owner of Robrady Design, the Manatee-based product design and development studio. Forbes, The Speed Channel, Gizmag and media and consumers from around the world call and click daily for information on Robrady's rMoto electric motorcycle prototype, a sleek, futuristic ride powered by emissionless renewable energy.

Although its transportation ventures hog the spotlight now, the studio, a privately held firm that employs 25 people, also dabbles in marine, consumer and medical products. Robrady (pronounced Roe-brady) collected a 2005 IDEA Gold award for medical and scientific equipment product design from the Industrial Designers Society of America and BusinessWeek. Brady's studio partnered with GMP Wireless Medicine and others to create GMP's award-winning LifeSync wireless ECG system, the first of its kind, which uses Bluetooth technology to transmit data from the electrodes on the patient to an electrocardiogram monitor.

"With LifeSync, we [encountered] some FDA regulations in regards to water intrusion with a medical device's electronics," says Brady. "The only thing that could make it more complex was if it had to go into space."

DOCTORS CUT THE CORD
JCR Systems, which won Sarasota's 2005 Technology Company of the Year award, offers lots of IT solutions for businesses, but the one that has everyone talking right now is the customized wireless tablet PC systems for doctors.

Computer tablets have been around for a while, but maturing wireless technology and shrinking laptops are making these lightweight PCs, about the size of a clipboard and as simple in style as an Etch-A-Sketch, more appealing to doctors. Instead of scribbling notes on a patients chart, the doctor can write directly on the screen with a special pen, and the notes are transcribed automatically and saved to a secure server.

Because they're mobile, the doctor can take them from one examining room to another, and the wireless connection allows access to the main database of records from anywhere in the office. Doctors also use them to search databases for drug interactions before they prescribe a medicine.

JCR Systems CEO Ric Roggero says the medical profession likes the convenience and the time- and money-saving benefits of the mobile tech tablets since they don't need to hire someone to type in the handwritten notes into a computer. Plus, all those metal filing cabinets can be sold on eBay.

TYING ONE ON
Making orthodontic braces both safer and cooler for teen-agers seems like an impossible task, but Manatee County's Glenroe Technologies may have done just that. Glenroe, acquired in May by NASDAQ-traded Dentsply, the world's largest professional dental products company, manufactures more ligature ties than any of its competitors. (Ligature ties wrap around the metal bracket on a patient's tooth to hold the wire in place.)

Glenroe, with 110 of its 140 employees in Manatee County, was the first company to offer colored ties. It's a phenomenon that quickly caught on with kids. "Because the majority of patients are in middle-school and teen-age years, they like to get the colors," says Amy Pardo, Glenroe's regulatory affairs manager. "If you went to Manatee High, you'd get the red and white ties." The company's "craziest" color? "Barbie Pink," says Pardo.

Besides being stylish, Glenroe says its non-latex ties represent the safer choice for orthodontists. "If you're an orthodontist, and you don't know if your patient has a latex allergy or not," Pardo says, "doesn't it make sense to give them non-latex elastics?"