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PathXL, a leading provider of Digital Pathology Workflow Solutions, today announced the completion of a contract with the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre to provide the centre with an integrated digital pathology solution.

Drug discovery studies within the research centre will be greatly accelerated and enhanced due to the ability of PathXL’s solution to enable timely and accurate image analysis, a pivotal part of the translational medicine pathway.

The solution brings together:

• PathXL’s own PathXL Manager Virtual Slide Management and Hosting software
• Image Analysis from Visiopharm
• A comprehensive ISO 27001 hosting service from PathXL to enable Oxford BRC’s virtual slide sets to be stored and managed securely on the latest SAN storage technology.

PathXL’s software works seamlessly with almost every available scanner, including the Hamamatsu NanoZoomer recently selected by Oxford BRC.

PathXL’s management software and suite of specific applications enable users to upload, archive, search, share, collaborate and report on huge volumes of pathology data without worrying about performance, security or ease of use and without getting locked into expensive proprietary standards and systems. PathXL can either be provided fully deployed on the customer’s site or as a hosted service over the web. This hosted option allows users to realise the full benefits of digital pathology, without major capital investment and without the need to support the solution in-house. Sharing slides with partners, pathologists and pharmas is at the heart of Oxford BRC’s day to day requirements so an important benefit of using PathXL is that pathologists can review cases with full clinical information instantly from any remote location.

Visiopharm’s software provides efficient tools for extracting morphometric data from Whole Slide Images.  It is designed specifically for Pathologists, providing simple controls for identification, classification, and quantification of nuclei, membrane, cytoplasm and other structures of relevance.   It allows Pathologists to work in true stain space (through colour de-convolution).  The technology is based on some of the most recent breakthrough research in image analysis and pattern recognition; and the software has been designed to reduce both the cost of learning and the cost of computing.

Oxford Biomedical Research Centre is a partnership between the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals, funded by the National Institute for Health Research. Oxford BRC undertakes translational research, meaning first time studies of medical innovations in patients, to improve healthcare delivery for all. 

The organisation funds or part funds 185 research projects across 10 therapeutic themes with a specific clinical focus, and 4 cross-cutting themes providing technology and innovation infrastructure for the clinical themes.

Oxford BRC chose PathXL because it uniquely provides:

• A robust and open digital pathology platform to support their national and international research collaborations,
• Pre-integration with Visiopharm’s best of breed Image Analysis framework,
• Flexible and reliable hosting options for any elements Oxford BRC chooses not to support in house,
• A wealth of other applications available on the same PathXL platform – such as biobanking, research and clinical workflow solutions.

Professor Runjan Chetty, Director of Translational Pathology and Consultant GI/Pancreatic Pathologist says:

“By adding PathXL’s Digital Pathology services to what we have to offer gives us the flexibility, speed and objectivity needed for biomarker assessment in particular.  TMA’s stained with novel biomarkers are a pivotal part of the translational medicine pathway and the timely, accurate scoring that image analysis provides will lead to the more interesting, relevant molecules lending themselves to target and drug discovery studies.  We foresee several other research and educational applications using PathXL for the wider remit of Digital Pathology.”

Philip Murray, Executive Vice President of PathXL, said

“We are really delighted to have been selected by Oxford BRC to be their digital pathology partner.  Oxford is one of the top biomedical research organisations in the world and their choice of PathXL is pleasing affirmation of the strength of the solutions we have to offer.  It also reflects a clear trend in the adoption of Digital Pathology – the technology has been widely accepted in education for some years, but the Oxford contract bears out our own experience that research organisations now view the technology as central to their work.  We look forward to helping Oxford enhance the efficiency and outcomes of their vital research programmes.”

About PathXL

PathXL specialises in web-based software and workflows for Digital Pathology.  Its PathXL™ Manager product provides a robust, secure and open web-based platform to enable digital pathology users across all fields to manage, view and collaborate around virtual slides easily and efficiently.  In addition, PathXL provides a range of applications and workflows on top of PathXL™ Manager to deliver specific solutions to pathologists, scientists and students in Education, Research, Clinical and Biobanking settings.  PathXL also provides a full range of supporting services, including scanning, hosting, image analysis and consultancy.  PathXL operates in the UK, Europe and North America.

PathXL is a privately owned company, headquartered in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Published November 2011

As part of an ongoing licensing partnership with Samsung Electronics, CSR Plc (LSE: CSR and NASDAQ: CSRE) today announced that its aptX™ Bluetooth audio codec built into this successor to the most popular Android tablet computer will enable it to deliver outstanding CD quality stereo audio wirelessly to a broad range of aptX-enables Bluetooth stereo speakers and headsets, such as the Samsung HS3000.

“With their inclusion of our aptX codec in the new GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus, Samsung has raised the bar for wireless audio quality. It’s strong statement from a market leader underscoring the appetite for our aptX technology to ensure pristine audio over Bluetooth,” said Anthony Murray, Senior Vice President of the Home Business Unit at CSR. “We look forward to Samsung continuing their rollout of additional mobile devices incorporating our aptX codec as consumers increasingly accept nothing but the best in terms of wireless audio quality.”

“The CSR aptX codec uses advanced algorithms to efficiently fit the entire 10 Hz to 22 kHz high-fidelity audio frequency range neatly within the more limited bandwidth of Bluetooth wireless transmission. Through the efficient use of data rates, our aptX technology is able to deliver unprecedented audio reproduction with exceptional dynamic range. Our aptX technology also delivers low latency to avoid video lip-sync issues. When incorporated in audio generating products like the Samsung GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus, our aptX audio codec enables stereo audio recordings to be delivered transparently over a Bluetooth link, regardless of whether they are stored uncompressed or in compressed formats such as MP3, AAC or FLAC.”

Samsung pioneered the seven-inch tablet market with the launch of the original GALAXY Tab, marking an innovation milestone in the mobile industry. The richer multimedia experience provided by the new GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus includes full HD video playback and access to the Samsung Music Hub, an extensive catalog of more than 15 million popular and classic music tracks. In addition, the AllShare feature will let the GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus share multimedia content with TVs, PCs and laptops for true dynamic convergence.

Samsung has announced that the Samsung GALAXY Tab 7.0 Plus will be available first in Indonesia and the U.S. starting from early November, and will be gradually rolled out globally, including Southeast and Southwest Asia, Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Japan and China.

Speechstorm a leader in software for automating customer service over the phone, is pleased to announce that Jonathan McKinney, Placement Software Engineer, Speechstorm, was awarded  first prize for Citi Group’s Best Mobile Application. The award sponsored by Citi  Group  in association with University of Ulster Coleraine, was in recognition of achievement for the design and development of a gaming application for Windows 7 phone. The winning application for Windows 7, used Visual Studio 2010, Xna 4.0 game studio and used C# as the language.

Oliver Lennon, CEO, SpeechStorm, commented: “I’m delighted Jonny has been recognised through this award. Speechstorm has a number of collaborative engagements underway at present with academic institutions which not only gives us access to some of the brightest and best students such as Jonny, but also enables these students to put their entrepreneurial  talents to the test in solving real business problems for our enterprise clients.” “As part of our mobile apps development team, Jonny will have plenty of opportunity to put his skills into practice during his internship as we build out our innovative product suite of mobile apps all designed to improve customer experience.”

In May 2011 NiSoft started an eclipse implementation project with Tampa Electric its Big Bend power station, Tampa Bay, Florida. Tampa Electric joins Orlando Utilities Commission and Gainesville Regional Utilities as Florida based power generation providers using eclipse to manage their HSSE document management processes.
Big Bend power station, located on almost 1,500 acres, has four coal fired units with a combined output of more than 1,700 megawatts. The station began service in 1970, with additional units being added in 1973, 19676 and 1985. In order to provide for customers during periods of peak demand, and to support Tampa Electric’s commitment to reliable power, a natural and fuel oil-fired peaking unit was installed at the plant in 2009. NiSoft are confident that the installation of eclipse will further enhance Tampa Electric’s reputation as a reliable and efficient power generation facility.
Andy Clark, Senior Vice President of Sales Americas was delighted with the successful eclipse implementation at Big Bend. He commented that NiSoft are continuing to expand their footprint in the United States, with a growing trend towards lock out management. “NiSoft have grown out of the requirement to implement reliable permit and lock out tag out systems in process intensive industries. We see more and more in the US, a requirement for the robust management of lock out, as well as tag out systems.”

NiSoft has secured a project with Electricity Supply Board (ESB) in Ireland to configure an electronic safety document management solution that can be rolled out across their fleet of power stations. This project will bring NiSoft’s coverage of UK and Irish power stations to almost 75% of the market share.

ESB operate 17 stations in Ireland, with a combination of thermal, hydro and pumped storage stations. The largest installation will be at the coal fired Aghada power station, with a generation capacity of over 900 megawatts. At the other end of the scale, the smallest site will be Lee Hydro stations with a combined capacity of 27 megawatts. ESB regard safe working as an integral part of how they plan and organise business activities and operations. They are confident that NiSoft could provide a safety document management system that would enable them to standardise processes across their fleet.

“ESB came to us with a set of stringent requirements designed to produce a common and consistent approach to safety management across the fleet” said Andy McIvor, Vice President Sales EMEA. “The solution chosen and deployed needed to be scalable, reliable and well proven in the market place. In eclipse NiSoft have a system that can provide exactly what ESB need. Combine this with our ability to be flexible to customer requirements and our strong UK and Ireland customer base, ESB could not have made a better choice.”

For media enquiries: contact:

Fiona Curtis, SpeechStorm, PR

Tel: +34698582925                              

PRESS RELEASE

SpeechStorm showcases dynamic IVR applications at Genesys G Force 2011 in Prague

 Belfast, Northern Ireland –  7th June 2011 SpeechStorm®, a leader in Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications, is pleased to announce that it will be a Silver Sponsor at the prestigious Genesys GForce event to be held in Prague on the 7^th-9^th June 2011. 

SpeechStorm will be represented in the Partner Pavilion at GForce where it will demonstrate how Genesys customers can use SpeechStorm Dynamic IVR to deploy new applications more quickly and make instant changes to prompts and call flows.

Delegates will also see how SpeechStorm can support the latest thinking in intelligent Customer Front Door (iCFD) solutions and full integration with Genesys’ Conversation Manager, enabling organisations to deliver a personalised customer experience on every call.

Damian Kelly, VP, Sales & Marketing, SpeechStorm, commented, “SpeechStorm is delighted to be a sponsor at Genesys GForce again this year.  GForce brings together organisations with a passion for innovation in customer service and we are very excited to share with them the further developments we have made in SpeechStorm3 to support a truly tailored caller experience.  For those organisations that have already invested in Genesys Voice Portal, SpeechStorm3 acts like a supercharger, giving them the power to deliver better customer experience more quickly and accelerate business plans.  SpeechStorm is already working with a number of Genesys customers who are seeing the benefits of our pre-built applications and we look forward to working with many more over the months and years ahead.”

To find out how SpeechStorm can supercharge your IVR, contact us at info@speechstorm.com or call us on +442890 943100

About SpeechStorm

SpeechStorm® is a leader in software for automating customer service over the phone.  Using a combination of speech, touchtone, SMS and video, SpeechStorm Dynamic IVR™ enables businesses of all sizes to reduce customer service costs, improve the customer experience and adapt more quickly to changing business needs.  For more information, please visit: www.speechstorm.com

As venture capital firm Crescent Capital gears up for its third fund it is working with long term legal partner Tughans to advise and prepare early stage companies for the rigours of the investment process.

It is now well recognised that venture capital will have a big role to play in the future success of Northern Ireland’s economy. That is evidenced by the creation of two new Invest NI-backed funds for early stage and growth companies, and the increased interest being shown in Northern Ireland firms by English and Irish venture capitalists.

Crescent Capital – which has tendered to manage the new Growth Fund – is looking forward to raising a new third fund and hopes to be in a position to begin making investments by the end of the year, after it attracts additional private sector capital from institutional investors.

In the meantime, Northern Ireland’s best known venture capital fund manager has been undertaking what it calls “pre-scrubbing” for investor readiness work with companies, preparing them for the investment process and ironing out potential problems before deals are actually signed.

“Crescent routinely works with local professional firms and intermediaries to develop their deal flow for new investments. It de-risks the proposition from the early days. If you can get this all done before you do an investment deal you have a higher percentage chance of getting the kind of exit velocity that you are looking for in your investment,” explains Crescent Investment Manager Deirdre Terrins. “We are very selective. We sometimes spend a lot of time on a proposition before we decide it is not going to work and walk away, but we are prepared to do that.”

Deirdre has worked on a number of transactions with Tughans Corporate Partner Vicky Dummigan with the lawfirm advising emerging businesses on corporate finance, shareholder issues, corporate finance, shareholder issues, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, employment law and more. In partnership with Crescent and E-Synergy, Tughans has recently delivered seminars to entrepreneurs and is working with ICT industry body Momentum to further demystify the venture capital process.

“The work we are doing together at the moment is to assist emerging companies to get ready to take investment and to take that next step. We’ve been spending time on a pro bono basis with companies to educate them and address problems they are having, to lay foundations so that they are more attractive for investors,” says Vicky Dummigan. “It is incumbent on advisers to make the process as cheap, effecient and open as possible for companies. A lot of young companies don’t have money to spend on legal advice in their early stages, so if you can assist them in getting over those initial hurdles it is of great benefit to them and to the investors, because the earlier they get quality advice the more streamlined their business process is and the fewer process.”

Since the recession Tughans has acted on over 20 venture capital investments for both companies and funds and also on three significant sales in the technology sector: Meridio to Autonomy, Lagan Technologies to Kana and Omiino to Xilinx.

Deirdre Terrins notes that while Crescent’s first two funds focused on the technologysector, it’s third fund is likely to have a broader target base, also taking in the likes of agri-tech, biotech, renewables and digital media – IP – based sectors that need cash to quickly turn their R&D into market-ready propositions. It also sees an increasing trend for “step-outs” where people in industry want to form their own companies.

“The common theme in Crescent investments is that there is always high grade indigenous IP aligned to an accessible market, whatever the sector, capable of being taken out to global markets in a short time frame, and capable of an exit or a float. There are interesting things around in our deal flow at the moment,” she adds.

Both Crescent and Tughans believe it should now be possible for Northern Ireland comapnies to gain access to funding from £250,000 to £20m without having to loo to European or American based funders.

But the local venture capital ecosystem is still fledgling and to some degree held back by a cultural fear of failure, which Dummigan says makes it important that Government ensures Northern Ireland has a strong seed capital environment.

“Without that you just won’t get a high enough number of quality start-ups to allow enough to progress to the next level. That’s where the public funding is very important because investment is very high risk at that stage. It is imperative to get a high enough volume of early stage publically backed companies,” she stresses.

Deirdre Terrins adds that Crescent has high hopes for the firms backed by it’s third fund:”We would run it to get to the point where the exit velocity takes in to an explort driven market and it either can look at an AIM flotation or it is the subject of an acquisition like Omiino, Lagan or APT,” she said. “It would be something that Crescent is passionate about, that we want more companies to aim for AIM. I would say the next tranche of Crescent companies would have a higher hit rate of AIM flotations that we have heretofore, and that can only be a good thing.”

Business women will get a chance to be inspired and encouraged at a major conference to be hosted by the Women in Business network this month.

The WIB NI Business Forum, which takes place at Stranmillis College Belfast on May 19 and is sponsored by the college, McNeill Travel and Invest NI, will allow 150 female business owners and professionals to avail of the expertise and advice of some of Northern Ireland’s most respected industry leaders and entrepreneurs.

The speakers and seminar hosts for the event include entrepreneur Grainne Kelly, the inventor of the globally distributed Bubblebum child safety seat; Valerie Pierce, founder of Clear Critical Thinking; Liesa Johnston, founder and marketing manager of Genesis Crafty; Aislinn Rice, sales director and head of a team of 52 people across 40 countries at Andor Technologies; and Alyson Hogg, the former TV presenter and now force behing the Vita Liberata beauty brand.

Andor’s Conor Walsh, Ulster Bank’s Ian Jordan and BubbleBum’s Grainne Kelly

Published May 2011, The Ulster Business Magazine

Belfast-based Andor Technology has added to its collection of awards by being named overall winner at the Ulster Bank Business Achievers Awards in Dublin, while also taking home the International Business prize.

Another Northern Ireland firm, Londonderry-based BubbleBum, was named best Start-Up Business in a hotly-contested category that attracted more than 100 entries.

There were eight Ulster firms amongst the finalists in the prestigious awards scheme, which had 400 entries in total from across the island.