BusinessTN

It’s entirely possible you’ve never heard of Jim Phillips or Luminetx, the Memphis-based bioscience technology firm he heads as president, CEO and board chairman. But if you do business in the 21st Century, you’ve probably got Phillips’ fingerprint all over your office.

A pioneer of cellular communication, Internet multimedia and the cable modem, before Phillips, businessmen didn’t carry PDAs. Before Phillips, Web sites didn’t have virtual tours. Heck, before Phillips, companies only used dial-up!

It’s also likely you’ll soon see a Luminetx product every time you visit the doctor, board an airplane or even use an ATM. And as groundbreaking as his career has been thus far, it’s quite probable Phillips’ current venture will define his career.

“Every person in the world will love this machine,” says Phillips, 54, in that comfortably confident, inclusive and agreeable tenor popular among venture capitalists and county commissioners. The “machine,” or VeinViewer, Phillips is referring to is an agile biotech marvel that uses infrared light and a built-in camera to map a patient’s subcutaneous vein pattern, which is to say, it sort of functions like X-ray glasses do in comic books.

“It’s really an experiential product,” Phillips continues. “Most people don’t believe it when I tell them about it, but seeing is believing. For some, it’s a religious experience.”

The initial intent for the $25,000 device is to eliminate the bruising and soreness that comes with multiple needle-sticks. Diabetics, blood donors and other patients who routinely have blood drawn and all the hospital patients who get IVs will now receive better care as practitioners begin using the VeinViewer.

If it all sounds like something ripped from the pages of a science fiction novel, well, just wait. Health care is only Luminetx’s first application. The applications next up, security and personal identification, are where science fiction becomes reality.

Just as the space shuttle was evidence of aviation and rocketry catching up to the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke, Luminetx’s scanning technology is indication of bioscience catching up to the work of authors like Philip K. Dick, whose books inspired the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report.

Re-branded “Snowflake,” Luminetx repackaged VeinViewer technology for biometric identification that Phillips says can be used everywhere from bank ATMs to airport security checkpoints. Japan’s Fujitsu Limited has that country’s patent on a similar scanning technology in use at ATMs around the country. Phillips holds that his company developed the technology first. Nevertheless, he has the U.S. and UK patents, and that will help pave the way for the security ID system airline industry leaders are calling ground-breaking.

“The future of the country’s security is dependent upon companies like Luminetx that are on the cutting edge of identification technology,” says Pinnacle Airlines CEO Phil Trenary. “Increased need has in turn created increased demand for high-tech IDs that can’t be copied or forged. I’m personally very excited about what Luminetx is working on.”

“You won’t need a credit card, won’t need a passport; you won’t need a wallet,” Phillips says. “[Going through airport security] with Snowflake, you pass your hand under the scanner and if you’re supposed to be on that plane, you get on that plane. If you’re not, you get to talk to a security guard. It’s user-friendly, painless and impossible to spoof. And given the time we live in, we think the timing is phenomenal for something like this.”

It would appear investors agree.

Over the last year Phillips raised more than $15 million in seed capital—$4 million over the phone of his Union Avenue office in the heart of Memphis’ blossoming biotech district. By the time commercial production of the VeinViewer began in April, Luminetx had 160 units on backorder.

“Luminetx immediately caught our attention as an emerging leader in the biomedical field,” says John Santi, Memphis’ managing director for Stanford Financial Group Co. “We look to partner with organizations that impact the way we live. The VeinViewer is an amazing tool.”

Phillips raised $6 million to market Snowflake to the private sector, as well as to Homeland Security. And with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) calling for legislation requiring better scanning technology at voter polls, Phillips might find more government clients. Such an upside lends credibility to his estimation that “both VeinViewer and Snowflake have multi-billion dollar markets—possibly multi-trillion dollar markets.”

And to think, just a few years ago, the VeinViewer’s early incarnation was a little-known Memphis professor’s project hidden in a basement office—unwanted and unfunded.

Herb Zeman invented the first image enhancement camera eight years ago to help people with poor vision, but there was little interest from entrepreneurs. Zeman realized he could use the device to identify veins inside the arms of children, but it would be years before real interest turned up.

With a career built on recognizing groundbreaking innovation, Phillips was probably the perfect entrepreneur for the pitch. “I was CEO-in-Residence with Morgan Keegan,” he remembers. “I’d just founded the FedEx Institute of Technology on the campus of the University of Memphis” (where Phillips earned his MBA).

“I went over to see it and found the device stored away at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, in a basement office with no windows. It had been there for three years.

“I did some due diligence, and once I got on the board of directors, Time magazine rated it one of the coolest medical inventions of 2005. Now we’re shipping systems to every major city in America.” In May, Luminetx was selected for Red Herring magazine’s “Top 100 in North America,” and picked as one of the edgiest, high-tech companies most likely to succeed.

Personal accolades are now de rigueur for Phillips. Most recently, he was inducted into the Society of Entrepreneurs, an exclusive Memphis fraternity whose members include Frederick W. Smith, Kemmons Wilson, Allen Morgan Jr. and J.R. “Pitt” Hyde.

Ever since being called out of class in grad school to research a local company, Telecommunication Systems of America (TSA), for his thesis, Phillips’ star has continued to rise.

The thesis led to a job after graduation, which turned into another and another until he eventually owned the company. Later he would turn the small Oak Ridge company TeleRobotics (IPIX) into a multimillion-dollar business providing 360-degree virtual Internet tours for government Web sites and high-profile clients like Disney and MTV.

Today, Phillips is wary of getting ahead of himself, going so far as to turn down interview requests from Good Morning America and Oprah. But he has admitted to courting pop culture by regularly attending high-tech geek gatherings like Wired magazine’s NextFest, and Hollywood’s celeb-studded Entertainment Gathering, where he mingled with the likes of Matt Groening, Quincy Jones, Naomi Judd, Jon Stewart and a host of others.

“Where we are as you write this story is that we want to be sure our health care product is installed properly and customers are saying it’s a must-have product,” he says. “If along the way we end up in digerati publications like Wired and Red Herring, that’s great.” His national reputation combined with Luminetx’s growing buzz is turning the Bluff City into a major biotech contender, not to mention adding another spot for Memphis in the international business community.

“We buy into the fact that Memphis is or is about to become a top 10 biotech city,” he says.

Obviously, the locals couldn’t be more pleased.

“We’re delighted to have Luminetx headquartered here and take center stage alongside Accredo, GTx and other Memphis biotech firms,” said Steve Bares, president and executive director of the Memphis BioWorks Foundation.

“I think we’ve got a real chance to grow here,” Phillips says. “It’ll take some leadership from the government; there are other states out there that are just outspending us.” Leaders take note. Despite company focus squarely on health care, there are plenty of other Luminetx mapping technology-related products coming in the near future, including VeinVisa, VeinCell, VeinPass and VeinKey. For Luminetx, stratospheric success seems about as mapped out as one could wish. Only continued execution remains.