Innovation

New technology produces detailed maps

Rowser — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:42:59 -0400

Author

Glenna Hanley

Source

The Daily Gleaner, Published Thursday February 25th, 2010

Source Url

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/gleaner/article/965492

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This image was produced in Sydney, N.S., using the LiDAR laser technology. LiDAR for Light Detection and Ranging is leading-edge technology that uses light-sensitive lasers to map out images of the ground.

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Local firm uses digital photography, LiDAR

Geographic survey maps for municipal planning or for building a strip of new provincial highway used to take up to two years to complete.

When the Emergency Measures Organization called a local aerial surveying company and wanted maps of the flooding St. John River in the spring of 2008, the EMO had the first maps in its hands within 48 hours.

The neophyte Leading Edge Geomatics was the company that did the aerial surveying throughout the crisis, mapping and providing the government agency with a clear picture of how extensive the flooding was.

"As the flooding was happening, we were out there mapping out the high water mark," said company president and general manager Bill Kidman

When the Lincoln Road geomatics company started in 2007 it had timing on its side.

The traditional film photography used in aerial surveying was on its way out, being replaced by digital cameras. So the start-up company skipped right to the digital equipment and didn't invest anything in film cameras.

High resolution digital cameras produce far more detailed maps than film cameras. And with the easy transposition of digital imagery onto computers and into mapping software programs, it has put the young company far ahead of what was possible with the old technologies.

But Leading Edge put itself even further ahead of the curve investing in another new technology, even more recent than digitalized photography.

LiDAR - for Light Detection and Ranging - is leading-edge technology that uses light-sensitive lasers to map out images of the ground. Few if any other surveying companies are using it here.

"It's been around for 10 years but it is just starting to gain acceptance in the commercial market now," said Kidman.

A former soldier, Kidman was introduced to LiDAR aerial surveying during his final years of a 20-year career with the military.

Leading Edge owns its own Cessna 260 airplane and has an on-staff pilot, and access to other aircraft when needed.

As the Cessna flies high above the subject area, from a 20-inch hole in the floor, a digital camera or the LiDAR equipment, or both, is firing rapidly, capturing image after image. Meanwhile all of those images and data are being fed into an on-board computer.

The company continues to do photography but increasingly customers are requesting the LiDAR product, said Kidman.

To anyone familiar with Google Earth maps, the photographed survey maps will look similar to those images. But the LiDAR equipment produces something quite different.

The company's LiDAR team leader Duncan Allen flashes up on his computer mapping done for Sydney, N.S. The staff used a combination of photography and LiDAR.

The LiDAR image of bright streams of red, yellow, blues and greens, flowing across the screen, looks like a piece of modern art. All of the trees, hills and buildings are stripped away because the laser can pierce through most things to capture the bare earth.

Using highly sophisticated mapping software, Allen then superimposes information from the digitalized photographs on top of the LiDAR image. Now the trees, streets, roads and buildings appear.

"This is all the elevation information for all the trees and all the buildings. It is taking this flat imagery and draping it right on top of the LiDAR and now you are seeing elevation-coded imagery," explained Allen.

The maps are so detailed you can see power lines and the lines of a parking lot.

"That's how sensitive this equipment (the LiDAR) is, it can tell if it is hitting paint or hitting the asphalt," said Allen.

These images were shot from an altitude of 1,600 feet but they can captures images from as high as 10,000 feet, said Kidman.

Among the advantages of the LiDAR, said Kidman, is the computer can read its data much more easily than from photographic images. Another is the laser can penetrate a tree canopy or anything light can pass through, to give more accurate measurements of a target area.

In its short life Leading Edge has grown from one employee - just Kidman - to 12. It has mapped some 23,000 square kilometres in the four Atlantic provinces, 40 ports in the United States, taken on big projects in Ontario and done work for engineering firms, municipal, provincial and federal governments and the Department of National Defence.

Kidman is most proud of the fact that the company has been able to provide such advanced technology to some small places, like Sussex and Summerside, P.E.I., places where larger companies would not go.

Kidman doesn't like to boast but this kind of geographic mapping and quality data provided by his small company is comparable to the work done by organizations like the massive U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency.

"This is a response capability pretty much the limit of what anybody could achieve," said Kidman.

So what's next for Leading Edge Geomatics? Australia.

The firm has a contract with a company there and expects to have staff in place by April.

Forward Thinking is a Thursday feature that explores research and development, as well as new technologies in our community. Send your comments and story ideas to news@dailygleaner.com.

Ambir looking to cut India's labour advantage

Rowser — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:10:42 -0400

Author

Reid Southwick

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Tuesday February 23rd, 2010

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/journal/article/962931

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‘If we succeed in this, we will reduce the labour advantage that Indian offshore providers have and make us more competitive in the marketplace,’ says John Munro of Ambir Technoloy Group. Photo by: KâtÈ Braydon/Telegraph-Journal

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Firm receives $333,000 from National Research Council to develop remote infrastructure management prototype

Ambir Technology Group Inc. is developing systems that would remotely monitor call centre networks for problems and reduce the need for highly skilled technicians.

The technology was billed Monday as a solution that would allow Canadian firms to reduce their costs and compete with Indian companies that pay much less for labour.

Ambir, a Saint John-based technology firm, received $333,000 from the National Research Council to develop a prototype that is expected to be ready in August.

"Ambir's technology will provide flexible and secure remote monitoring systems that can control a number of different call centres simultaneously," said Saint John MP Rodney Weston.

The technology would identify IT infrastructure problems that could be fixed automatically and identify other, more complex problems that would be handled by human technicians.

The future customers would be call centres with offices across the globe. In a single location, a call centre could find a problem with its network in the southern United States and a temperature concern at its data centre overseas.

Some call centre operations have in-house IT staff that monitors their networks, but others are outsourcing the work to companies that do it remotely.

Remote infrastructure management is an emerging market worth $80 billion to $120 billion annually and India's burgeoning outsourcing industry is poised to capture half of it, said John Munro, vice-president of sales and marketing with Ambir.

Right now, India, with its low-cost labour, has the advantage. But companies with technology that could carry out much of the work with automated systems would be able to compete.

"If we succeed in this, we will reduce the labour advantage that Indian offshore providers have and make us more competitive in the marketplace," Munro said.

"Where you would rely on a lot of senior experienced people, there is a demographic shift going on in the workforce that those people are starting to retire.

"We need to capture that knowledge, but we also need to do it in a way that's really competitive and mitigates the threat from offshore providers and makes sure Canada still has relevance."

Research and development of the technology, expected to cost a total of $500,000, began last June and is scheduled to be finished in August. The company is developing the systems with a local call centre and expects to have a proven prototype ready.

At that point, company officials will decide whether they want to continue to invest in the product and bring it to market or sell it, Munro said.

"Should it be viable, we would be looking for additional investment, either through private industry or selling the concept to a vendor who could take it to the next level of commercialization," he said.

Munro said he expects there will be other applications for the technology, other than the call centre industry. He said the systems could monitor Internet protocol television networks or even electricity grids.

Celebrate your innovative achievements

Rowser — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:49:12 -0400

Author

Reid Southwick

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday February 15th, 2010

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/954790

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Gary Stairs. Photo by: The Daily Gleaner/James West

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Saint John area focus group told success stories aren't being properly communicated

Greater Saint John is already home to innovative and successful companies, and doesn't have to change very much, but the region is not able to effectively tell its success stories, a new report concludes.

Officials from the area should measure and monitor those successes and celebrate achievements, says the report, compiled by consultants for two local economic development groups, the Saint John Board of Trade and Enterprise Saint John.

"Such an influential group as the Board of Trade needs to be tapping its collective membership on their shoulders and saying, tell us how you're innovating in your little shop," said Gary Stairs, co-author and CEO of Stellar Learning Strategies. "Or, on an annual basis, who is going to win the innovator of the year award?"

Stairs and co-author Chris Baker, CEO of Continuum Research, held a focus group with 18 business and civic officials last November about whether they consider their organizations to be innovative and how innovation is achieved, among other considerations.

Their final report largely concludes that Saint John was and continues to be home to many important innovators, including iMagicTV, a now-defunct company that was the first in the world to offer software for Internet protocol television, and T4G, a technology firm.

As well, the report says, the city is the site of what the authors call "social innovation," referring to projects, programs and organizations aimed at reducing poverty.

The problem is that Saint John leaders are not able to properly communicate their successes, the report found.

"Really, community leaders feel there's not much that needs to be changed, except doing a 'better job of telling our story and not being ashamed of where we come from'," the report reads.

"'Saint John is no longer a blue collar, industrial community as it was 30 years ago - it is a white collar with blue stitching - perhaps all it needs is a new package or pretty ribbon'."

Focus group participants said there is a need to change the external - and internal - perceptions of the city, celebrate past, present and future innovation, and attract "visionary" leadership to inspire others.

"Although a big infusion of population was seen as helpful, more importantly, it was stated that Saint John needs visionary, well-informed and inspired influencers and leadership at all levels in the community," the report reads.

"The emerging imperative, then, is for the region to attract energetic, youthful and, potentially, understated leaders who can engage beyond the regional perspective as well as advance the important dialogue among the five regional communities."

Stairs said economic development groups should also play a role in fostering "innovation." Enterprise Saint John should continue to lure innovative investors and businesses to the region, while Fusion Saint John has to keep attracting young people, he said.

And propelICT, a non-profit association focused on growing the information and communications technology sector, should continue its work, Stairs said.

"It's all of those in concert," he said. "I wish I could say there was a big A-bomb of innovation that I'm about to drop."

The 18 officials involved in the focus group were Jane Barry, David Baxter, Andrew Beckett, Jane Fullerton, Randy Hatfield, Dale Knox, Wendy MacDermott, Glenn MacLean, Bob McVicar, Shawn Peterson, Eric Poirier, Anita Punamiya, David Reid, Jeff Roach, Claire Ryan, Eric Savoie, Marilyn Singh and Jennifer Tupper.

Entrepreneurial Leadership Program Registration and Videos

Jeff Roach — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:11:49 -0400

Author

Source

Wallace McCain Institute

Source Url

http://www.wallacemccaininstitute.com/application_process

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The 2009-10 Members of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Program

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Registrations are now open for 2010-2011 Entrepreneurial Leadership Program of the Wallace McCain Institute.

If you are an entrepreneur who wishes to reach your full potential and maintain your head office in the Maritimes, then you are encouraged to apply for the Entrepreneurial Leaders Program (ELP).

The basic criteria for applicants:

be running a business they founded
have growing staff and revenue
be committed to a head office in the Maritimes
exhibit personal tenacity and drive

Factors that will be considered:

growth/export potential of the company
serial entrepreneurial behaviour
outside community involvement
comments from references

All applicants are asked to submit a one page letter outlining their motivation to become part of the ELP class. Letters must include the names and emails of 3 references that share the belief that the candidate should be considered as one of top 15 emerging entrepreneurs in the Maritimes. See sample application.

Get your application form now

Videos
Take a look at the videos to get a better understanding of the Entrepreneurial Leaders Program. If you wish to apply please click on the button below to download our application: http://ow.ly/16jGp

Professor knows need for speed

Rowser — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:32:10 -0400

Author

Paola Loriggio

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday February 8th, 2010

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/947089

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Kenneth Kent, a computer science professor at UNB, has spent years improving Java Virtual Machine. Photo by: Keith Minchin/For the Telegraph-Journal

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UNB researcher working on Java Virtual Machine efficiency

University of New Brunswick researcher Kenneth Kent plans to make computer systems - from the top online shops to government servers - run faster.

The computer science professor has spent years improving Java Virtual Machine, a set of computer software programs and data structures that allow Java applications to run on various operating systems. Java is a popular programming language with widespread commercial use.

Now he's preparing to take the helm of a new centre at the university's Fredericton campus that will work to speed up Java Virtual Machine on large, complex computer systems.

The centre, a partnership with IBM, will have some 20 staff and employ about as many graduate students from UNB's Faculty of Computer Science, according to a statement by the university. The project will receive roughly $3 million from the Atlantic Innovation Fund over four years. Total costs should reach $5.1 million.

Eventually, the centre "will have a larger team working on Java technologies than IBM has in its commercial shop in Ottawa," Kent said in a phone interview from his campus office.

The project could bring short- and long-term jobs to Fredericton, boost the university's reputation as a leader in technological research and reduce the province's brain drain in computer science, Kent said.

He wants to show students they have options in the province, and hopes IBM will set up a permanent facility in Fredericton if the project proves successful. "We produce good workers, but they're always running away to Ontario," he said.

IBM spokeswoman Carrie Bendzsa said the company "works with specific professors on specific projects," but wouldn't say whether it would set up shop in New Brunswick after the project is over.

The centre is "a recognition of the high calibre of the staff and research taking place at UNB," Bendzsa wrote in an email. "Some of our new graduates working on cutting-edge projects like the Java Virtual Machine come from UNB."

For students, the centre is a foot in the door of a top company as it races to enhance efficiency on multi-core computer systems, Kent said.

Computer companies can't make processors - also called "cores-" much faster, so they boost performance by linking several processors, he said. Some gaming systems boast 32 processors, he said.

As multi-core systems gain in power, they often lose in efficiency, the computer science professor added. Most problems concern memory and communication, he said.

"It's like going from one employee to 32," he explains. "You have two challenges: where to put the information so everyone can get it, and how to make it so that all the workers are talking to each other."

The centre will work to identify bottlenecks and low-performance areas while running Java Virtual Machine technologies on multi-core systems, Kent said. The team will then design algorithms to fix these problems.

He expects some progress within a year, but the bulk should occur in the third and fourth years. The software tools and techniques created by Kent's team could hit the market quickly, thanks to the direct link with IBM, he said.

"Practically everything would go faster," he said of the impact on consumers, noting Service New Brunswick's back-end servers run on Java. Online stores such as Amazon also include Java applications.

Kent came late to the world of computing. While at Memorial University, he studied history and math, with the ultimate goal of becoming a teacher, like his parents.

He took a mandatory computer science class as part of his math coursework. "I liked it, and I did well, so I thought, 'I should do another one,'" he said.

When his computer grades surpassed his marks in history, Kent switched minors. When they topped those he got in math, he made computer science his major.

As a master's student, he started tinkering with Java Virtual Machine. He modified networked computers to execute the program on several machines at once. At the PhD level, he worked with a supervisor to blend the program with hardware/software co-design.

Capacity for innovation

Rowser — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:08:25 -0400

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday February 1st, 2010

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/939217

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Premier Shawn Graham delivered his state of the province address last week. Photo by: Matthew Sherwood/Telegraph-Journal

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Premier Shawn Graham's prominent use of the word innovation in his state of province address has the research community hopeful of the role of R&D in achieving self-sufficiency

Innovation is the key to self-sufficiency.

That's the message many took away from Premier Shawn Graham's state of the province address last week. Though Graham didn't say those words exactly, he used the word innovation, or variations of it, 10 times.

Graham said the province's "greatest opportunity lies in our people," referring to them as innovators on five occasions.

"We need to be more creative, innovative and entrepreneurial than other jurisdictions. We need to work harder and we need to be smarter," the premier said.

This prominent reference to innovation pleased Calvin Milbury, chief executive of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, an independent corporation created and funded by the province with a mandate to increase the province's capacity for innovation through investments in applied research and offering equity capital.

"The premier referencing innovation in his speech really endorses the importance innovation has in achieving self-sufficiency," Milbury says. "He really focused on people. If you don't have people who are interested in innovating and willing to take the risk associated with that it's hard to get ahead as a province."

Milbury says the premier's speech is part of a culture change in the mind of the public to recognize innovation is needed to stay on the cutting edge and remain competitive.

But University of New Brunswick economics professor Tony Myatt isn't convinced.

"Apart from the aspect of encouraging high-tech leaders to locate in the province, the rest of it is spin," Myatt says of the speech. "They may talk about it, but are they actually trying to encourage it through giving incentives?"

The government is in the process of changing the corporate-tax structure to make the province more attractive to outside investment and Business New Brunswick has a couple of programs targeted at helping start-ups and companies adopting new technologies.

The government has also given the innovation foundation $35 million since it launched in 2003.

The recipients of the more than $30 million spent by the foundation have raised another $170 million.

Milbury says he's grateful for what the province has done to date, but there's room for improvement.

"It's the tip of the iceberg," he says. "So much more can be achieved."

Dwight Ball, executive director of research services at UNB, says he'd like to see the foundation's mandate and definition of innovation expanded beyond engineering and sciences to include some arts, namely psychology, sociology and socio-economic studies, as well as research in the business department.

"For the government to actually assess spending on health care they've got to have good quality information to base their decisions on," Ball says. "I'm not talking about MRI development, I'm talking about how people best benefit from health-care delivery."

The province's universities rely on the foundation as a major source of funding for research.

The foundation is open to expanding but doesn't want to spread its dollars too thin, Milbury says.

The foundation is focused on research with commercialization opportunities and providing access to capital for innovative start-ups.

Ball says some of the softer sciences could contribute to economic prosperity.

"It's not quite as straight a line as you make a widget, patent the widget, and then create a company to sell it or license the widget to a company," he says.

But he says better understanding of the psychology and sociology of a workplace could go a long way in the business community, and policy studies could help the government do more with the money they have.

Milbury says a greater surge of money would be needed to develop funding programs for that type of research, and the foundation would still like more money with which to expand its existing programs.

Myatt warns any government-funded program aimed at encouraging innovation has to have the word, along with research and development, clearly defined.

"Otherwise you can reclassify standard operational things as research and development and get subsidized for that," he says.

R&D will keep Chalk on top

Rowser — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:48:51 -0400

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday January 18th, 2010

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/923802

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Ian DeLong, manager, Chalk Media Corp. at its offices in Fredericton. Photo by: Keith Minchin/For the Telegraph-Journal

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Fredericton company among those relying on research to stay ahead of the pack

Last week a major announcement showed how being bought by an internationally renowned corporation can have its benefits.

Fredericton-based Chalk Media Corp., a subsidiary of RIM since last February, will drastically expand its research and development capabilities over the next two years as it hires up to 50 new employees, nearly doubling its current staff, thanks to its parent company's backing.

In 2006, Chalk Media built off the BlackBerry innovation of putting email in your pocket by adding the ability to receive graphics, audio and video on a smartphone.

Since then the company has continued to upgrade the service roughly twice a year, and as Chalk Media's development team expands so will the upgrades.

"What's going to change is not necessarily the timing of when the releases are produced, but the amount of value they will provide," says Ian DeLong, software development manager for Chalk and one of the firm's first employees.

Where upgrades have so far added or improved one or two features, future upgrades may add even more new functions.

Though most of what the Chalk Pushcast Software does could be done by posting a link to a website in an email, the Chalk platform can save a training video, for example, to the phone so users can watch it when they are out of wireless range, such as on a plane or subway.

Chalk has many competitors, but all provide only a small chunk of the service.

But Chalk needs to remain the pacesetter, in part because the Chalk software is used by Research In Motion Ltd. to sell to Fortune 500 companies.

"We don't want to become complacent and think nobody will ever catch up to us," DeLong says. "Being the leader isn't always about being the best in your market, but also the first."

The technology market is the hottest and fastest moving market and competition over mobile phones is a couple degrees hotter.

"You are only as hot as your latest offering and almost as soon as it's announced it seems to go stale," says Carmi Levy, an Ontario-based independent technology analyst.

Consumers forget companies that aren't part of the leading edge, Levy says.

"Look no further than Microsoft Corp.," he says. "For all its billions spent on R&D, it has failed to capture market attention in the mobile space."

The windows mobile operating system is far behind the systems developed by Apple Inc. RIM, or Google Inc.

Though most consumers don't need the latest and coolest models, the newest and most innovative doo-dads get the most attention and set the purchasing trends for the most of the two-to-three-year cellphone cycle.

"If you look at what's hot today that's what most of us will be using in a year or two," Levy says.

Although Chalk's offering isn't a smartphone itself and is targeted at RIM's traditional market - large organizations - Levy says the same principles apply.

With Apple beginning to break into the business market with the iPhone - much like RIM's efforts in the consumer market - and a slew of other efforts to make corporate mobile communication more engaging through multimedia, the sub-market is just as competitive, he says.

Chalk has to remain the king of the castle, because the scrapes and bruises from the tumble down could make the climb back up difficult.

Other technologies and industries may not be as fast moving, but R&D is just as important for small niche-focused companies, Levy says.

Being the first allows firms to sell when some are willing to pay top-dollar, he says, this also puts the company in a good position for mass adoption.

The early players are more likely to get the big contracts with governments or large companies that will dictate much of the future a new service or product.

"Whether small or large you need those revenue streams desperately to survive," he say.

Or in the case of something like an iPhone app, not being among the first risks getting lost among the sea of look-a-likes and copycats.

"Someone else has already beat you to the punch and you don't have the marketing dollars," Levysays.

R&D helps companies and in turn helps the area it's happening in says Larry Sampson, executive director of the New Brunswick IT Council.

"Linkages between research and economic prosperity are well established," he writes in an email.

"A representative paper published by the U.K. Office of Science and Technology in 2004, shows 'wealth intensity,' GDP per person, and 'citation intensity,' citations per unit of GDP, as highly correlated. But you don't need to be a rocket scientist to appreciate that growth in the global economy has been coming primarily from new products and services."

But in the 2000s New Brunswick had one of the lowest levels of R&D in Canada at about one per cent of GDP, compared to two per cent nationally and 2.5 per cent in Ontario and Quebec.

Also government and universities have funded most of the province's R&D, 61 per cent, compared to 38 per cent nationally.

"Our traditional sources of wealth, while crucial to the province, cannot provide the level of growth we need to become a "have" province," Sampson writes.

"New sources of wealth come from new ideas, and research is the primary source of new ideas, so we better be investing there."

Company targets health clinics

Rowser — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:38:58 -0400

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday December 21st, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/896474

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Chris Boudreau, CEO of Clinic Server, a Saint John-based tech startup that has a server system aimed at health clinics. In the background reviewing the software are marketing manager Brad Dryer, left, Paul Kasdan, chief operating officer, Tom McLean, chief technical officer, and Ken Salmon, owner of Saint John Sports Medicine Clinic. Photo by: Kâté Braydon/Telegraph-Journal

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Clinic Server is now hoping to gain a share of the American physiotherapy market

As jurisdictions across the developed world push their hospitals and doctors to go digital to more efficiently and effectively treat patients, dozens of companies have launched in hopes of making money in the niche market.

But a Saint John-based firm is looking to capitalize on providing similar services to the relatively ignored health clinics.

Clinic Server focuses on organizing patient files for physiotherapists, chiropractors, doctors and other health professionals' offices and clinics.

"There was a huge gap in the market," company chief executive Chris Boudreau says. "A lot of the smaller clinics didn't have an affordable way to manage their people and resources."

The company already has its system in 51 clinics with 84 locations across Canada and is now hoping to gain a share of the American physiotherapy market, which brings in $11 billion annually.

Clinic Server will be targeting some of the more than 115,000 physiotherapists south of the border, 75 per cent of whom Boudreau says work for smaller independent clinics.

Although there are plenty of other health clinic management systems, Boudreau says his is cheaper and easier to install and maintain.

"A typical entry point for a clinic could be as low as $50 per month," Boudreau says. "The average is $100 per month."

The service is managed online but accessed through a program users download from the Clinic Server website. The application runs in Java - a programming language often used for web-based games and other interactive online content that can be read by most computers - which Boudreau says is faster than a web-based application, but easier to set up and maintain than a desktop application.

"With a web browser you can get slowness, but when you're working with a pure java, it's closer to a native application being on your machine," he says.

But because all the info is managed through the web, health professionals can access the files from any internet-connected computer after downloading the java program and logging in.

Clinic Server's system can also be accessed from a Blackberry, and the firm may someday develop an application for the iPhone.

"If you're a clinic that has five or 10 locations it allows them to manage all their clinics on one system," he says.

Boudreau says the company is targeting physiotherapists first because it's the field, where "the real heavy lifting has been done."

The Canadian Physiotherapy Association has endorsed the management system and Queen's University teaches the product in its physiotherapy program.

But doctors' offices, many of which still keep patient files on paper, can also use the system. The Clinic Server system can be integrated within most e-health records systems used at hospitals so all health professionals could have a more holistic view of a patient's history.

It can also make transfers easier and more efficient, Boudreau says.

Currently when a family doctor refers a patient to a specialist they will call the other office and have them call the patient to book an appointment. When that appointment finally happens sometimes tests are redone if the files weren't sent. But with Clinic Server's system a doctor could access a specialist's calendar, book appointment and share relevant information.

Before the appointment the system can send the patient a notification.

"But it's also a confirmation," he says. "For physiotherapists and chiropractors, they need to have a steady flow of clients."

If a client doesn't show up for his or her appointment, a private practice may have wasted person hours. The system will also show trends over time to help improve service at a clinic.

"These types of patients are getting in within a couple of days while these other types of patients are getting in within a couple of weeks," Boudreau says providing a hypothetical situation. "How can I change that?"

It can also help a clinic shape the business to better serve clients and make more money.

"We're treating a lot of people for motor vehicle accidents, if our clinic had more expertise we could take on more," Boudreau says.

Clinic Server had been in the works since 1998 when clinician Paul Kasdan and java programmer Tom McLean saw a need for it. Andrew Patterson came on later to integrate the business trends functions of the system, which has been piloted at a Saint John Clinic for roughly a decade.

A year-and-a-half ago, the system hit the market and when Boudreau, a full-time Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc. employee, heard about Clinic Server this summer he decided to take on the chief executive position as a second full-time job.

The company has been accepted into Propel ICT Inc.'s accelerator program, and is now looking for financing for the sales and marketing push it needs to expand. If or when financing comes Boudreau says the company will more than double revenue every year for the first three, at which point the business should be profitable.

Remsoft's forestry software a 'game changer'

Rowser — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:54:53 -0400

Author

Rebecca Penty

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Tuesday December 15th, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/journal/article/890008

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Remsoft co-CEO Andrea Feunekes says the company is very excited about its new product, which took up about 50 per cent of the development team’s time and accounted for the bulk of the firm’s research and development spending over the last three years. Photo by: David Smith/for the Telegraph-Journal

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A major forest management consultancy in the United States gave software developer Remsoft Inc. kudos for a product launched recently that was three years in the making.

American Forest Management called the Fredericton firm's Collaborative Analytics Platform a "game changer" for its company and the industry as a whole, in a release.

Andrew Ferguson, the Charlotte, N.C. firm's director of appraisal services, said in an interview that the Remsoft product lets foresters in the field interact with important data digitally, allowing his company to avoid printing maps for the first time.

The new technology means a savings of time, costs and reduces errors for the consultancy, Ferguson said."It really has moved our process to more of a paperless environment," he said.

American Forest Management is one of the largest forest consulting and real estate brokerage firms south of the border with more than 4.5 million acres of privately-owned timberland under management and more than 230 employees working from 40 offices in 15 states.

The company provides a range of forestry services including land management, investment analysis, timberland acquisition and disposition services, appraisals, growth and yield modelling and various other offerings.

Ferguson said the firm can now present important information spatially about tree stands, for example, and field foresters can simply edit the information digitally to make changes.

"It saves us in time that we don't have this cumbersome exchange of files and paper maps and what it does is it actually can help in an overall planning process from the standpoint of data management," he said.

American Forest Management helped Remsoft iron out the kinks in its new software by running a pilot project. Employees from the consultancy were in Fredericton in September presenting at Remsoft's 2009 edition of its annual user group conference, during which the company's clients from around the world got a peak at new products and learned how to better use existing software.

Ferguson said the Collaborative Analytics Platform is bound to turn heads, adding that it's particularly advantageous for integrated forest products companies because it involves the field workers in the planning process.

"I think there will be others that will look for it."

Remsoft co-CEO Andrea Feunekes said the company is "very excited" about its new product, which took up about 50 per cent of the development team's time and accounted for the bulk of the firm's research and development spending over the last three years.

She said Remsoft sought to address a problem in forest management where not all in an organization were able to "buy into" resource management plans because they weren't able to understand complex mathematical modelling.

"We needed to find a way to take all of the smarts from the results of the modelling exercise and be able to hand it over to people who can work with it," she said.

Remsoft developed a platform of "building blocks" that allows firms to create specific tools depending on who needs to see the information, she said, offering an example.

"It's like Lego (pieces) and they can snap them together and say, 'Here's yours,' " she said. "If it's going to be high level, the person is maybe a director of the company and they want to review the results. They would just be seeing graphs and maps and charts to look at results."

Remsoft, which has operated out of Fredericton for 15 years, sees most of its forest management business from companies in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Uruguay. The company has a small footprint in Chile, Argentina and Europe. Remsoft is now breaking into Finland and has a few clients in Malaysia, China and Korea.

Speaker preaches value of innovation

Rowser — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:21:43 -0400

Author

John Pollack

Source

Telegraph-Journal, Published Monday December 14th, 2009

Source Url

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/rss/article/888783

Image

Image Caption

Doug Hall, founder and chief executive of the business consulting firm Eureka! Ranch, provides insights on how to innovate to a business audience in Fredericton Friday. Photo by: John Pollack/For the Telegraph-Journal

Body

Ohio-based CEO tells audience you can make money regardless of the industry if you stay ahead of the curve

If you're not unique you better be cheap.

This is one of the main messages Doug Hall had for a Fredericton business crowd at a breakfast speech Friday.

The founder and chief executive of Cincinnati-based business consulting firm Eureka! Ranch, was trying to show the audience how they can be innovative to make more money regardless of what industry they are in or what their financial situation is.

"Innovation is meaningful uniqueness, which means customers are willing to pay more for your offer," he said.

If a company doesn't clearly communicate what sets them apart from the competition, the only hope is to be cheaper, he said.

For companies that are neither unique nor cheaper, Hall said, they need to stop whining about falling profits and start innovating.

"Organizations that focus on innovation are twice as likely to have above average profits," he said.

But innovating doesn't mean starting from scratch, because on average it takes six years for a brand new product to take off, he said.

"We need to take current capabilities and adapt to new products and new markets," he said, adding it will create a cycle that will encourage new innovations.

He used the example of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), which took its iTunes music program for its Mac brand computers and applied the software to the iPod, which broadened the market and led to the iPhone, which led to the App store, which allows the company to take a cut of the profits from software other companies develop for the iPhone.

But it's not just large companies like Apple that can do this, Hall said.

"It may not make sense to ship something around the world, but you can invent it and patent it," he said, adding the royalty checks will eventually start rolling in.

But new ideas don't come from just continuing everyday business, Hall said, they come from being exposed to outside influences that will stimulate creative thinking.

Once you have the idea, Hall said, you have to figure out what the possible "death threats," would be to the idea as a business and come up with ways to get around it.

"It doesn't need to be a two-year-long process," said Doug Motty, chief executive of Enterprise Fredericton, the group that brought Hall in for the speech. "It's something that if your senior team and your organization work through a you can very quickly find out if that is a good idea or not."

Ideally, Hall said, addressing the death threats should be done in a day.

Motty heard about Hall in part because Eureka! Ranch recently opened an office in Charlottetown, and thought he had a good message for companies looking to develop new markets and products.

Ryan Veino, a senior consultant with OnX Enterprise Solutions Ltd., a value-added reseller of information technologies, said Hall brought up some good points.

"We're seeing the same thing, people who aren't innovating are failing," he said. "This gave us some ideas, especially the little business card idea where, you need to have something on it that's very clear and simple to your customers what you do different, how you're innovating, how you're changing."