Dr. Larry Miller has seen it all. While interning at Chicago's Cook County Hospital (the hospital where top-rated NBC drama "E.R." is set), he encountered medical situations more outrageous than the show that mirrors it. Card players pounded a nail into the skull of a patient after he was found cheating at a card game. Miller says he's also smuggled drugs into Haiti -- medical drugs that would help ill Haitians, but that the Haitian government would steal if they were legally brought in.
But then several years ago, Miller says he saw something he'll always remember. Friend and paramedic Nick Davila was in a fatal automobile accident. Doctors tried to sustain his life, but because they couldn't find a vein to insert an IV and administer life-saving fluids in time, Davila lost too much blood and died. "I made up my mind that this was never going to happen again," Miller says.
So he went to work. He combined a practice used in bone marrow transplants with his knowledge of injecting medicine in the blood stream. The main problem with administering an IV into a person suffering from shock or other forms of trauma is that the veins collapse because blood rushes to the vital organs. Finding a vein is extremely difficult, sometimes impossible. But inside bones are what Miller calls "non-collapsable veins." If paramedics could drill into the bone and inject medicine, it may save thousands more people.
"It was like the light finally came on ... the hollow drill," Miller says smiling.
And thus the Vidaport, renamed the EZ-IO, was born. Paramedics can save a person's life in 12 seconds by drilling a hole in the bone using a AA battery-operated drill and pumping medicine into their veins through the bone marrow.
Carmen Novitsky, flight nurse for San Antonio Air Life, has used the EZ-IO since it was introduced to him two years ago. He now teaches training courses on the intraosseous device.
"A lot of time you're unable to get IV access on patients because they're in shock or because they just don't have good venous access," he says. "So (with the EZ-IO) we're able to initiate this into their bone, and it allows us to give medicine to the patient much quicker."
The alternative, Novitsky adds, is what paramedics call placing a "central line." In this procedure, he has to insert a needle, wire and tubing into a central vein. The process, he says, is more complicated, more technical, and involves more preparation. Placing a central line takes from five to 10 minutes, compared with the average 12 seconds that Miller's device requires.
Making a life
Although the technology and knowledge necessary for such a procedure has been around for decades, Miller's ingenuity, innovative spirit, mechanical background, and perseverance combined the pieces of the puzzle together.
"You have to be a little different," Miller says about doctors specializing in emergency medicine. He says they work harder, faster, which makes them adept at finding solutions to problems quicker.
Miller grew up in Ypsilanti, Mich., where his father manufactured automotive parts during the industrial age. Miller attributes his mechanical side to his father, saying "it's something that's ingrained" in him.
But he's known he wanted to be a doctor since age five. He completed his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College in Illinois and attended the University of Michigan before finishing his residency at Cook County Hospital. Out of 123 interns serving in the hospital at the time, Miller received the only "Intern of the Year" award, presented to the intern who gave the most to his patients.
His sensitivity to his patients and caring attitude for all he serves is manifest in his life's mission statement by Winston Churchill: "We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give."
An inventor's life
In 1982, Miller partnered with a friend who invented wheelchair carriers that sit on top of vans. Over the next several years and through the development of other firms, Miller and his partners continued research and development of mobility products.
In 1990, Miller's company, LifeQuest Medical Inc., acquired the rights to develop the Osteoport, an implantable device aimed at better delivering chemotherapy to patients through the hip bone. The company was eventually sold, but the clinical trials conducted as part of the development of the technology proved that delivering medicine through the bone was as effective as delivering it through the bloodstream.
Over the next several years, Miller continued his research on products providing intraosseous vascular access, or delivering medicines through the bone. The entrepreneurial and research efforts culminated with the development of EZ-10, which is marketed by his new company VidaCare Corp.
"It takes your whole life," says Miller of being an inventor. "You have to have a vision and be motivated, you have to be knocked down, you have to have investors put money in it (the project), you have to have a science background and a mechanical background. You need a team."
Miller attributes much of his project's successes to the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) and other investors who believed in the product and put up the financial capital to make it happen.
Alan Dean, director of the office of technology ventures at UTHSCSA, says what's carried Miller and VidaCare to their success is Miller's experience, drive and humility -- the same attributes he admired in his friend and colleague when they were first acquainted six years ago. "My only responsibility now is to watch the progress like a happy parent watches a child develop," says Dean, who initially licensed the technology. "The hundreds of lives being saved has been the most rewarding part of this experience."
Beyond the lives saved, Dean adds that seeing a good, ethical person like Miller succeed and share in the financial and humanitarian benefits has been enjoyable.
Many hats
Doctor, inventor, entrepreneur and family man are all hats Miller wears throughout the day. Someday he hopes to add published book author to his lists of titles. He has written two books, one about his work in a Chicago ER, the other about his work in bringing medicines to Haiti.
His philanthropic work is what touches him the most. Miller says before he sold the EZ-IO to the military, he shipped his product to units in Iraq pro bono. A letter he received from a nurse in Iraq lauding the success of the product in saving lives on the battlefield would make it worthwhile.
Now, the EZ-IO is located in EMS vehicles throughout Texas and the United States. Miller recently hired Philip Faris Jr. to take over as CEO of VidaCare. "To be successful, you have to surround yourself with people who are smarter than yourself," Miller says. "I chose the best of the best."
Today, two years after the FDA approved use of the EZ-IO, the Gathering of Eagles, a group of highly regarded EMS medical directors from the top 25 cities in the country, included the device in their recommendation statements of 2005.
As successful as his products have been, however, Miller says what his most proud of is his family. "If you can't be successful with your family, how can you be successful in anything?" he says.
His office is decorated with pictures of family members, memorabilia from places he's been and suitcases and bags patiently waiting for places he'll go. A tree in his office is decorated with months-old "Happy Birthday" balloons, something his colleagues put up, but he didn't want taken down.
"The minute I met him I could tell he was a unique individual," Dean says. "His personality conveys confidence and experience, and I liked him. He's just a genuine, compassionate, highly personal man."
There's no sign that he'll let up from his hard work, either. At 66, Miller says he has no plans to ever retire, ensuring that more generations of new doctors and new inventors will learn from him.
Sara Elizabeth Payne is a San Antonio-based free-lance writer.
