Medical fluid maker rolls with the punches as delays mount

Progress has been slow for Assure Infusions, a new health care supply company taking shape in Bartow. But its founder believes the payoff will be immeasurable.

By Brian Hartz
| 8:00 a.m. December 30, 2022
| 0 Free Articles Remaining!

Medical supply entrepreneur Alex Lucio expects his new company, Assure Infusions, to be up and running in September 2023. (File photo)

Development

One Big Thing

Alex Lucio altered the original plans for Assure Infusions to include a second, smaller building on the site in Bartow. While the larger facility will make 1,000-millimeter and 1,500-milliliter IV bags, the smaller one will produce bags with capacities ranging from 50 milliliters to 250 milliliters, broadening the range of products the company can offer.

“There are all kinds of different IV bags,” Lucio says. “The hospital pharmacy will get the small bags, and if they need to send a drug upstairs to a patient, they'll inject the small bag. The patient already has a central IV line in, and it usually has a big bag. They'll spike the small bag into the big bag.”

He adds, “What's interesting about IV fluids is that maybe 80% of the time, it's not really the fluids the patient needs. The central line is put in because it's the drug delivery system, so they don't have to keep jabbing the patient over and over again.”

Back in August, serial entrepreneur Alex Lucio didn’t have much to show, yet, for Assure Infusions, his grand new medical-supply manufacturing venture in Bartow, a city of about 20,000 people in Polk County.