Three startups share $1.5 million in provincial funding

THE RECORD

August 17, 2010 By Rose Simone, Record staff

KITCHENER - A television news station broadcasts a report live, from the 10th floor of a building, without a satellite truck parked outside.

Elsewhere in the city, a doctor looks at images of an X-ray taken at the hospital miles away, without any special software on his computer to get those images.

Meanwhile, your computer intelligently finds available information about the topic you are researching at work, without the need to type the words into a search engine.

On Monday, three startup companies behind these three newest made-in-Waterloo Region technologies received $1.5 million from the Ontario government.

Dejero Labs, which makes the video broadcasting technology; Client Outlook Inc, which makes sharing of medical images easier, and DossierView, which enables automatic knowledge searching, each received $500,000 from the government's investment accelerator fund.

Between them, the three companies plan to create about 95 jobs over the next two years, said John Milloy, Ontario minister of research and innovation and Kitchener Centre MPP.

The announcement was made at the Tannery District building in Kitchener.

Dejero, currently employing about 28 people on King Street in Waterloo, has put the television satellite truck and all its cables into a portable box, about the size of a small suitcase, said chief executive Ron Neumann. The television camera just plugs into the box, and the live transmission can begin.

Television networks are testing the technology, he said. The live coverage of the Olympic torch run was done using the company's technology, Neumann added.

The $500,000 from the Ontario investment accelerator fund will "help us further develop the product, commercialize it, and get it in the hands of real customers," he said.

Client Outlook in Waterloo has created web-based technology that allows doctors to view images and confer with one another over a web portal, without the need for special software on their computers.

Steve Rankin, founder of Client Outlook, said the company is now "just at the point of commercialization," and the Ontario government money will help the company get to the next stage.

DossierView, located in one of the Tannery buildings in Kitchener, is working with a law firm doing a trial of the new knowledge-searching software, said chief executive Stephen Bacso. The government funding "will help us bridge the gap," to the next stage of development, he added.

rsimone@therecord.com