Biomedical of Tustin Is Sold to MacMillan

Biomedical Business International Inc., a 7-year-old Tustin health care research and publishing operation, has been sold to MacMillan Inc. publishing house in New York for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced Friday.

Biomedical Business founder and president Pieter Halter said the company will join MacMillan’s health care information operations, a fast-growing unit that Halter said generates about one-third of MacMillan’s annual revenues of $700 million.

“MacMillan’s goal is to grow even faster in the health care publishing field,” explained Halter, who will remain with Biomedical Business and will direct MacMillan’s health care publishing operations in the Western United States as well.

Founded in 1978, Biomedical Business publishes newsletters and magazines and stages seminars and conferences for manufacturers of high-technology medical devices and their financial backers. Recent conferences have focused on breakthroughs in eye-care products, infertility treatments and laser medicine.

In addition, the company publishes a monthly magazine aimed at bringing together investors with inventors of products needing financial backing. A biweekly newsletter publicizes new medical technology and changes in corporate strategic planning and marketing. Halter said the company expects revenues of $3.5 million this year. He declined to reveal its profits.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Halter, 40, parlayed his schooling in chemistry, electronics and business into a job with American Hospital Supply Corp. of Evanston, Ill. In 1974, he came to Santa Ana as director of sales and marketing for American Edwards Laboratories Inc., the American Hospital division that manufactures heart valves.

However, in 1978, struck by the burgeoning number of small businesses inventing and manufacturing high-tech medical devices in Orange County, Halter struck out on his own as a medical consultant and newsletter publisher.