Companies are medical, economic ‘game changers’
From limb-lengthening procedures toremoving skin cancer without a scar, two innovative Palm Beach County medical operations are making a difference in both patients’ lives and in the local economy.
On Thursday, at its 2017 EconomicDevelopmentForum, the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County featured technologies and innovations that are expected to have future impact on the county, including medical innovations.
In medical technology, Paley Institute in West Palm Beach and Sensor Healthcare in Boca Raton were touted as “game changers” in health care that are bringing medical tourism to Palm Beach County.
Dr. Dror Paley, founder of Paley Institute, said he believes “Palm Beach County can become a medical tourism district,” giving his own orthopedic andspine treatment center asan example.
Paley moved his practice from Maryland to the warmer climate of West Palm Beach in 2009, to locateonthe grounds of St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
More than 90 percent of his practice followed Paley, as well as patients. The institute now employs 250 people.
Paley Institute, which specializes in methods and devices to help children and adults who have one leg that’s shorter than the other, now does 1,500 surgeries a yearwith patients coming from the 50 states and 90 countries, Paley said.
Those patients book 5,000 nights in Palm Beach County hotels, aswell as patronizing the county’s restaurants, pharmacies and other businesses, he said.
“We offer not only hope, but realistic hope and solutions not available elsewhere,” said Paley, who initiallywent to Russia and Italy to study medical techniques and has developed more than100of his own surgical procedures.
“Innovation is at the heart of it — look for the square pegs — those are the ones who change theworld,” Paley said.
Joseph Sardano, CEO of Sensus Healthcare in Boca Raton, said many patients are seeking alternatives to surgery. Hiscompany’s products use superficial radiation therapy that offer a non-surgical treatment of basal cell skin cancer.
Thetreatment delivers a dose of radiation that goes only deep enough to attack the cancer cells, and doesn’t leave a scar, he said. Typically, surgeons recommendMoh’s surgery, where thin layers of skin are surgically removed. Surgery costs more and the wound can take a month to heal, Sardano said.
Most patients want to avoid the scars and long healing time.