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Well, well, well: Three developments in wellness in recent weeks. • UnitedHealth’s Golden Valley–based OptumHealth subsidiary has acquired Wellness, Inc. The Illinois company adds job-site health screening and diagnostic tests to OptumHealth’s health-information-management services. The acquisition takes place in a consolidating employee-wellness field and it bolsters OptumHealth in competition with firms such as locally based StayWell. • Meanwhile, Old Home Foods has launched Safflower Power Yogurt, with nutrients derived from safflower oil that will improve muscle tone and reduce body fat. • Hormel’s Jennie-O Turkey Store subsidiary puts emphasis on wellness, too, with a new wellnessdaily.com Web site, billed as a “comprehensive online destination to simplify personal health and wellness management.”
Two venture capital firms are organizing a new fund to seed Minnesota start-ups in biotech, medtech, life sciences, and health information technology. Minneapolis-based Affinity Capital Management and Cincinnati-based Triathlon Medical Ventures plan to raise $10 million and invest $250,000 to $500,000 per company initially.
Keith Halleland, until recently a founding partner at Minneapolis law firm Lewis Nilan & Johnson, launched a new firm in March focused on business law and consulting. The new firm will collaborate with his old one, but Halleland says the start-up frees him to pursue a national growth strategy. Dorsey & Whitney, another Minneapolis firm, with clients in educational publishing and software, has formed an education services practice including about three dozen of its attorneys.
The Timberwolves will repeat their first-of-its-kind fan-interactive February 21 telecast, but not until they broadcast with KSTC-TV again next season, says the team’s chief marketing officer, Ted Johnson. During the commercial-free game in February, sponsored by Verizon on KSTC, fans were encouraged to interact with the team and the broadcast via social media: live chat with Wolves executives, tweeting questions for a half-time interview, competing in trivia contests on Facebook and a photo scavenger hunt on Flickr, and lobbying for draft picks via YouTube video.
Regis Corporation is expanding its Raze men’s salon business, first launched in 2008 with a store in Minnetonka. A second store in the Shops at West End in St. Louis Park opened in March. It will have new competition from the Men’s Department, a new salon that Kurt Kueffner, formerly with Aveda, also planned to open in March, in the Minneapolis Warehouse District.