INNOVATION   It’s been more than a decade since Gerry Cook, an inventor in Sandpoint, Idaho, started work on his bicycle pedaling system. But in true inventor fashion, he never finished it. He got sidetracked.

Those distractions, inspired by requests from a physical therapist, have produced far greater success than he possibly could have imagined. He’s turned an experimental therapy device for a Seattle SuperSonics basketball player into multiple unique physical therapy machines now used in 30 clinics across the nation.

Some evidence, he says, indicates his technology could be a major development for those suffering from back pain. Read More>>

INNOVATION   She can’t forget the body bag. Jenny Moeller was driving home in rural Montana and passed a restaurant surrounded by yellow caution tape. That night, she heard on the news that a man had killed his girlfriend.

“I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh. That’s going to be me,’” she says. Read More>>

INNOVATION   Let’s say you took a dive at your local roller rink and wound up in the hospital with a fractured vertebra. You’re in big trouble — these things don’t exactly heal themselves.

Or at least they didn’t used to. Read More>>

INNOVATION  Two years ago, Bernadette Popella and her husband, Hubertus, packed their bags and left Germany. After three decades as a licensed pharmacist and owner of a pharmacy in Hamburg, Bernadette had finally given up.

“I was always disappointed, because I found that I couldn’t really help people. I found myself … a slave of the pharmaceutical industry,” says Popella, through speech tinged with a German accent. “And I didn’t want that anymore.” Read More>>

INNOVATION  When doctors diagnosed Alisa Hideg with breast cancer last June, Hideg, a family-practice doctor herself, knew she wanted to move swiftly.

“I was diagnosed on June 20, and June 30 is when I started chemo,” says Hideg, who found swollen lymph nodes under her arm during a self-exam. Read More>>

INNOVATION  Raise your hand if you would like half-a-million dollars to finally build a prototype of your genius medical device — the one that’s been nagging at you for years.

That’s the offer that the Health Sciences and Services Authority of Spokane County is putting to enterprising local businesses that are already trying to develop commercially viable new health technologies or biomedical devices.

“We wanted to throw something out there to the community that would allow for some creativity,” says HSSA board chair Nancy Isserlis. Read More>>

It’s the biggest hospital in Eastern Washington, and a quick look at a few statistics will tell you why: Each year, Providence Sacred Heart sees about 80,000 patients — and that’s just in the emergency room. If you break the ER numbers down a little more, it’s even more amazing: 6,666 patients a month; 222 patients a day; a new patient about every six minutes. Read More>>

INNOVATION  It takes a certain technique — taught or learned — to pop your ears during a pressure change. You swallow, you yawn, you chew, you pull on your lobes.

But sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes no matter which technique you use, you can’t get that pop to happen. The buildup becomes annoying, maddening, then painful. With an ear infection, it can be excruciating. Read More>>

INNOVATION  Say you were concerned about the structural integrity of your house, about the possibility that it may not be standing in 20 years. You’d want to see your home’s blueprints, you’d want a structural engineer to interpret those blueprints, and you’d want that information quickly and conveniently. Read More>>

INNOVATION  Fifteen years ago, treating degenerative disc disease through surgery was difficult and painful, leaving patients in the hospital for five days, with a long scar that roughly traced the spine. But if the work of local orthopedic surgeon Antoine Tohmeh makes it through arduous clinical trials, all of that could change. Read More>>