ATDC company Digital Assent’s self-service patient check-in and patient education solution, the PatientPad™, won the “2010 Cool Technology of the Year” award presented by TechAmerica and the Technology Association of Georgia at the recent Spirit of Endeavor Awards.
Congratulations also to company founder and CEO Andrew Ibbotson, who was also nominated for the “Outstanding Leadership” award.
Founded in 2009, Digital Assent is a healthcare technology company located at ATDC. “One of life’s biggest frustrations is going to the doctor’s office, filling out the same information multiple times on a paper clipboard, and then sitting in the waiting room leafing through old magazines while you wait to see the doctor,” said Ibbotson. “This is the problem we set out to fix”
On Monday October 11, ATDC Gwinnett became a reality. Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson and UGA President Michael Adams signed a memorandum of understanding to officially kick off an ATDC presence in Gwinnett county on the UGA campus in Lawrenceville. The all-star event also included Regent Richard Tucker, Jim Maran President of the Gwinnett Chamber, Nick Masino of Partnership Gwinnett, Melanie Brandt COO of TAG, Margaret Dahl Vice Provost at UGA and many others.
“Creating new jobs and bringing innovation to market are top of mind for just about everyone,” said “Bud” Peterson. “At Georgia Tech, we focus on innovation and serving as an economic engine for Georgia, and we are honored to collaborate with the University of Georgia and economic development organizations in Gwinnett County to expand our reach.”
Our own Stephen Fleming described it best “We’re here to support the entrepreneurs that are building the companies that drive our economy”.
Here is a terrific video prepared by Partnership Gwinnett on the event:
“This is a big deal for economic development in Gwinnett County, and we’re excited,” added Nick Masino
David King of VoAPPs said the help of mentors in the ATDC program meant a lot to growing his business, which specializes in direct drop voice mail … “It’s that coaching that I found invaluable,” King said. “The connections and contacts that they introduce you to … it’s just outstanding.”
Georgia Tech College of Computing spinout company and ATDC member Usable Health recently installed their healthy eating ordering kiosk at Tin Drum in Technology Square. The Usable Health kiosks give personalized meal recommendations based on a customer’s nutritional goals and place the order directly from the kiosk.
This exciting milestone follows earlier successful prototype trials at the Georgia Tech Woodruff and Brittian dining halls carried out with funding from the Georgia Research Alliance. Congratulations to the Usable Health founders Dr Jiten Chhabra and Chad Bonner on achieving this major step in the commercialization process.
Show your support of Usable Health and take advantage of the 10% discount Tin Drum is currently offering on orders placed through the kiosk.
Georgia Tech spinout and ATDC member company Sentrinsic has received a $500,000 investment from the GRA Venture Fund, a private investment fund created to help finance promising companies that emerge through the Georgia Research Alliance VentureLab commercialization program. Sentrinsic is an industrial sensing and controls company built on technology developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Mike Orndorff, Sentrinsic CEO, said, “This investment gives us the growth capital needed to press fast forward on our product development efforts. We are growing the size of our company and expanding the breadth of our product offerings.”
According to Orndorff, Sentrinsic’s proprietary technologies are uniquely suited to be easily integrated into existing industrial equipment and stand up to the rigorous, harsh environments in which these products operate. They use these technologies to unlock new capabilities and efficiencies in existing industrial products for their partners.
Sentrinsic’s first product, set to reach the market in the second half of 2010, is an energy efficiency device for industrial pumps. It combines the company’s patented, ruggedized, linear displacement sensor with Sentrinsic’s proprietary embedded conditioning and control electronics.
“The device lowers pump energy consumption by up to 50 percent, saving end users 10 to 20 times the cost of their investment in energy bills over the life of the product,” said David Beck, chief operating officer of Sentrinsic.
Congratulations to Dave Beck, Mike Orndorff and the rest of the team at Sentrinsic. We are proud of your successes and looking for big things to come.
ATDC has a preponderance of software and business services companies. We are asked all the time about intellectual property and patent protection. But the landscape is fluid. And the recent Supreme Court decision might change everything. Come to a special brownbag next Wednesday July 28 at 11:30 to learn more. We will meet in the ATDC Community Room. This is a true brownbag, bring your own lunch!
The future of software and business method patents — Impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bilski v. Kappos
On June 28, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a patent claim directed to a commodities hedging process was not patentable subject matter. The claimed method was found to be too “abstract” to constitute patentable subject matter. There are widespread implications for the decision on the patentability (and enforceability) of patents directed to any kind of process — including software and business methods.
John Harris, senior partner in the IP Practice Group at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP in Atlanta, will be the featured speaker at the brownbag on July 28, about the Bilski v. Kappos decision. He will give a summary of the case and what happened. Some of the highlights include:
* Is software still patentable?
* Can you patent a business method at all after this decision?
* How can I file a patent on software that might be found patentable?
* How will the USPTO and patent examiners react to this decision?
ATDC and The University of Georgia Gwinnett have joined forces to launch ATDC Gwinnett. We now have a presence in one of the fastest growing counties in the US and one of the largest concentrations of technology companies in Georgia.
Our office is at the UGA campus in Duluth. It is right off of 85 at Old Peachtree. Paul Freet will be there every Thursday meeting with Gwinnett County entrepreneurs. You can sign up for office hours with Paul on Thursday afternoons. We also are starting a weekly circle that will meet every Thursday morning at 8am.
Thanks to UGA, the Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership Gwinnett for their hard work to help make this happen!
CapVenture 2010 is coming to ATDC in August. We are now pleased to announce the awesome group of speakers we have lined up. It is a great event for startups that want to learn more about how to raise capital. For more information go here: http://atdc.org/services/capventure-2010
The following are the scheduled presenters at CapVenture 2010
Georgia Tech spinout and ATDC member company Simatra Technologies has released version 1.1 of their simEngine compiler for biophysical modeling and simulation. The update to the system features improved performance on single- and multi-core processors, as well as the ability to seamlessly leverage graphics processing units (GPUs) for dramatically improved simulation speeds.
Simatra recently demonstrated how simEngine’s GPU computing features can be used to dramatically accelerate the simulation of a model of brain stimulation; in their example, a $500 off-the-shelf GPU card was used to achieve a 77x performance improvement over a single-core processor. Companies and researchers with a need for high-performance nonlinear simulation can now obtain it at a very low cost, and Simatra’s intuitive software can reduce the programming time from months to days.
Georgia Tech spinout and ATDC member company GTronix was acquired this week by National Semiconductor. GTronx is a fabless semiconductor company that designs and sells analog ICs for low power audio applications. No terms of the deal were released.
The original technology for GTronix was developed in Dr. Paul Hasler’s lab at Georgia Tech. The company did relocate in California a few years ago, but continued to remain an active member of ATDC up to today. Congratulations to Dr Hasler and the team at GTronix!
ATDC Member company VoAPPs has announced the availability of telePARTICLES, a set of “Telecom APPs” that easily integrate into software applications, back office systems, and business processes. Available in an APP Store format, the company is releasing the first 3 telePARTICLES including:
Service Type: Determines if a telephone number is a Mobile or a Landline number
Mobile Working Number: Determines whether a Mobile number is working and dialable
Number Scrubber: Cleanses a list of phone numbers to remove duplicates, numbers with invalid formats, etc.
telePARTICLES are designed to make it easy for people to do Telecom Tasks that should be easy – but that are actually hard to do.
“I looked around and realized that it’s really hard to find out if a phone number is a mobile number or a landline number. That led me to wonder why it’s so hard to find out if a mobile number is working or not. I found it inconceivable that this kind of basic telecom information was not available to every Telecom Application, to the average Business Process Manager, or to most Software Developers – so we decided to fix that.” David King, President of VoAPPs
