Lighthouse sells division, names new leader

Escondido, CA-Optelec U.S. Inc., a manufacturer of products for people who are blind or partially sighted, has purchased the Professional Products Division of Lighthouse International.

The companies also entered into a long-term partnership to provide education, advocacy and awareness programs to medical, allied health, and rehabilitation professionals.

Prior to her June 20 appointment, Dr. Cortes was senior vice president and chief nursing officer, patient care operations, at Bridgeport Hospital in the Yale New Haven Health Care System. She previously worked in clinical, managerial, administrative, and academic posts at Columbia University and New York Presbyterian Medical Center, Rockefeller University and Hospital, Hunter College School of Nursing, Mount Sinai Hospital and School of Medicine, and New York University Medical Center.

Meanwhile, Lighthouse was recently named as a finalist for the 21st Century Achievement Award of the Computerworld Honors Foundation. The group praised Lighthouse's FLEX-VRA Distance Learning course for training vision rehabilitation assistants. Lighthouse is one of five finalists in the Government and Nonprofit Organizations category. Lighthouse's information technology department was able to create lessons that were fun and engaging for students with and without disabilities. Every lesson was made to "speak" by integrating Macromedia FlashMX with text-to-speech voice technology. The case study is part of the Computerworld Honors Collection, which serves as a resource for scholars and individuals.