Travis E. Poling Express-News

San Antonio's Vidacare EZ-IO was named the country's top innovation in the Wall Street Journal's 2008 Technology Innovation Award competition.

The Vidacare Corp. device, which was developed with the University of Texas Health Science Center, uses a battery-powered driver to quickly insert a needle directly into the bone for delivery of medicine in an emergency situation. The device saves lifesaving seconds that would be used to get a needle into collapsed veins.

The Journal selected Vidacare's EZ-IO from among 700 entries in its eighth annual competition for a gold award.

Dr. Larry Miller co-founded the company in 2001 and has since adapted the technology for other uses, including making excruciating bone marrow biopsies less painful.

The awards recognize groundbreaking innovations in 16 fields; judges included venture capitalists, corporate executives and representatives of research institutions. The judges examined each technology for its measurable impact.

EZ-IO “really does seem to be a new technology that already has made a significant clinical impact,” Innovation Award judge Anthony Kamaroff said in a prepared statement. Kamaroff is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and editor of Harvard Health publications.

Vidacare CEO Phil Faris said the company has worked hard to get the technology in the hands of emergency care technicians and hospital ERs “so we're extremely pleased by the market and the technology validation represented with this award.”

Vidacare received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration four years ago and went to market in 2005. More than 40 percent of the nation's emergency rooms now use EZ-IO and about half of the emergency medical services, Vidacare told the Wall Street Journal.