Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania (BFTP/SEP) has approved investments totaling $1.65 million in six early-stage technology companies.

"We're happy to see two companies in this round of investments involve technologies being spun out of area universities: MicroMRI with technology from the University of Pennsylvania, and DE-ID Data Corp based on work done at the University of Pittsburgh. Also, three of these companies involve products that will be important to the health care industry," says RoseAnn B. Rosenthal, president & CEO of BFTP/SEP.

"BFTP strengthens the Commonwealth's role as a leader of cutting-edge science and technology, innovation, research and commercialization," says Dennis Yablonskly, Secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development. "These sound investments, made by BFTP/SEP, ensure that the state's emerging and growing technology enterprises will have access to the resources they need to become more efficient, more competitive and more successful in the global marketplace."

DE-ID Data Corp, LLC
Richboro (Bucks County)
Approved Investment: $250,000

Founded to develop technology that protects patient privacy from data mining, DE-ID Data Corp's name stands for "de-identification." De-ID Software offers accurate, automated high-volume de-identification of text in patient records, reports and information systems, serving as a HIPAA-compliance and security filter for personal health information in medical records and reports. Licensed from the University of Pittsburgh, the technology easily integrates into clinical and research information systems.

Dan Wasserstrom, DE-ID Data Corp's founder and chairman of the board, has devoted his career to bringing new technologies, delivery channels and analytical techniques to health care; Steven Merahn, MD, most recently marketing VP at Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, is general manager.

First Flavor, Inc.
Bala Cynwyd, Montgomery County
Approved Investment: $400,000
(BFTP/SEP previously approved $250,000 in 2007)

Inspired by the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, First Flavor's premier product, Peel 'n Taste®, uses edible film technology (similar to breath-freshening strips) to deliver product taste samples to consumers, a new product marketing technique. Due to Peel 'n Taste's® success as an easy, safe and fun marketing tool, First Flavor is emerging as a leader in the growing field of multi-sensory marketing and has received significant positive press over the past two years, including from The Wall Street Journal and The Today Show.

Jay Minkoff, president & CEO, is also an activist in the Philadelphia Jewish and health care communities who looks for innovative ways to take care of people in need. He earned his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his BS in civil engineering from Tufts University.

Hovitate, LLC
Philadelphia
Approved Investment: $100,000

Hovitate's flagship product, Vuzit (pronounced "views-it"), is a web-based document viewer that users can embed into any web page. Vuzit revolutionizes the way people and companies use documents by enabling users to enjoy universal office document viewing, security, auditing and search functions without having to download a driver, plug-in or other application that loads documents in a separate window and program. By using Vuzit, publishers can more easily keep content secure, monitor viewer activity and post information and advertisements next to the document. Vuzit utilizes AJAX technology to embed documents into web pages.

Vuzit recently announced it is selling a product line called the Business Services Platform. "In a recent poll of our customer base, we found that 47 percentof our users were excited to have a corporate edition of Vuzit at their company," Brent Matzelle, CEO and founder of Vuzit, noted. "Demand for the product has been overwhelming."

Company founder and CEO Brent Matzelle was previously a member of the media development group at Traffic.com, where he designed and co-developed the first real-time 3D traffic reporting system used by broadcast television networks such as FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, and UPN.

MicroMRI, Inc.
Philadelphia
Approved Investment: $400,000
(BFTP/SEP previously approved $100,000 in 2007)

MicroMRI is taking strides to combat the chronic disease osteoporosis, with its innovative method of visualizing and quantifying bone micro-architecture using high resolution MRI. Its goal is to develop technology that can better diagnose and assess treatments for the disease, becoming the premier company for noninvasive bone micro-architecture assessment. The technology was licensed from the University of Pennsylvania.

Osteoporosis affects both men and women, although the main threat is to woman after menopause, a population rapidly growing in most industrialized countries. Most important, one out of every two women will have an osteoporosis-related fracture in their lifetime, which can be a life-threatening event. Current technologies are limited at diagnosing and evaluating osteoporosis.

Dr. Andreas Muehler, president & CEO, is a physician trained in radiology with a long history of working in management positions within the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

mVisum, Inc.
Relocating to PA
Approved Investment: $250,000

mVisum has created a medical communication system for doctors that allows them to receive, evaluate and respond to digital medical data through most popular handheld smartphones, even when away from a medical center. The company was formed after the firsthand experience of one of the founders, whose relative's life was saved during a heart attack because of the fortunate presence of a cardiologist living next door.

The technology allows for faster, and therefore better, care for patients—for example, allowing ambulance workers to send patient data, such as EKG, or other images, to the on-call physician or specialist ahead of time so that they are already prepared for treatment when the ambulance arrives. Medical personnel can also use the system to communicate patient data in any way they need, securely through mVisum's HIPAA compliant platform. mVisum is run by president and CEO Praveen Dala.

Nayatek LLC
Relocating to PA
Approved Investment: $250,000

Nayatek is a global provider of enterprise information management solutions providing comprehensive Content Archiving, EDiscovery, Storage Management and Compliance functionality. Nayatek's solutions provide the next generation "better way" to address specific problems and challenges that clients face today and beyond in managing their electronically stored information.

Nayatek's flagship solution, Datosphere, is a next-generation enterprise information management platform specifically designed to assist organizations to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of their messaging and electronic document resources, and to maintain objectively verifiable, robust procedures to comply with industry regulations. Organizations can respond effectively to expanding regulatory compliance pressure and their growing needs to easily archive and manage disparate data formats. Nayatek is led by Marc Olson, CEO; formerly president of international operations for Sybari Software and VP of southern Europe for McAfee, Inc.