Last month Trinity Health, the fourth largest Catholic healthcare system in the country, hired Explorys to manage its healthcare data analytics in its hospitals, outpatient facilities and other facilities. Trinity will implement Explorys’ suite of cloud-based big data analytics solutions to manage the company’s clinical data.

The deal puts Explorys, which already is a leader in big data, on top in the clinical data market. Explorys has been rapidly growing sin... Read more >

Jewels Johnson dabbled in a few different career paths before she found her true calling: baked goods. She grew up in Shaker Heights, went off to London, Charlotte, Las Vegas and Chicago before returning to Shaker in 2006 to work as a teacher at Shaker Heights High School.
 
Then, in 2011, armed with her grandmother’s recipe box, Johnson opened Sugar Plum Cake Company. “I’m a self-taught baker; my grandmother taught my mom and my mom taught me,&rdquo... Read more >

Building on the success of the book “Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology,” a collection of essays and images about Cleveland edited by Anne Trubek and Richey Piiparinen, and subsequent blog, the publishers announced that they will launch an online magazine, Belt, this coming September.

“There was so much interest in 'Rust Belt Chic' that we really wanted to continue to have a space for people to contribute,” says Belt editor-in-chief Tr... Read more >

On Thursday, May 2, Bad Girl Ventures celebrated nine finalists in its business plan competition during its spring 2013 graduation ceremony at The Galleries at CSU, announcing the winner of its $25,000 BGV loan and other awards.

Jewels Johnson, owner of the Sugar Plum Cake Company, earned the $25,000 loan for her custom cake bakery. She plans to use the loan to open and expand her new physical store and offices, as well as develop her Devour! Gourmet Baking Mixes line.Read more >

Nine young Northeast Ohio businesses were inducted into the Charter One Launch100 Leadership Circle on April 25. Local inductees included Nicole Zmij, CEO of Amplified Wind Solutions in Cleveland, Lindsay Sims, founder and CEO of Renter’s BOOM, Lissette Rivera, founder of SafeCare, all in Cleveland, and Shaquita Graham, CEO of King J Transportation in South Euclid.

“The Launch100 Leadership Circle really focuses on minority entrepreneurs and encourages them to... Read more >

When Geoff Thorpe founded NDI Medical in 2002 with his neurostimulation device for bladder control, he saw a market with a lot of potential. The company sold its MEDSTIM device to Medtronic in 2008, kept the NDI name and branched into developing and commercializing new neurostimulation device companies.
 
The move has proved successful. NDI has launched two companies and has grown to 32 employees, 21 of whom work in NDI’s Cleveland headquarters. The company... Read more >

TOA Technologies announced that Madrid, Spain-based Telefonica has chosen TOA's mobile workforce management software to manage its worldwide field technicians. Telefonica, which is one of the largest telecom companies in the world, chose TOA for its cloud-based ETADirect technology and its ability to ramp up operations quickly in multiple locations.
 
“It was a fairly long selection process,” says TOA vice president of worldwide marketing John Opdycke.... Read more >

The fourth Blackstone LaunchPad opened on the CWRU campus on April 23, providing a place for aspiring entrepreneurs to gather, learn and get advice.

“LaunchPad is aimed at students seeing it and saying, ‘I have an idea,’” says Deborah D. Hoover, president and CEO of the Burton D. Morgan Foundation. “It’s aimed at students walking in and talking to people and an idea takes off.”
 
The Burton D. Morgan Foundation in Hud... Read more >

Danny Sheridan comes from a family of entrepreneurs -- his father invests in small tech businesses and deals in commercial real estate for medical officers, and his mother is a marketing consultant. So it was only natural that the junior at Beachwood High School would start his own business. After finding he had a knack for selling things on eBay, Sheridan started Woodside Distributors, distributing energy efficient LED lights for Solon-based Mr. Beams.
 
“Mr. B... Read more >

Ryan O’Donnell has created a way to add a personal touch to online gifting. The founder and CEO of Sociagram has created an online cloud-based platform to create customized personal video messages. O’Donnell recognized that people enjoy sending e-cards and adding other personal touches when they send online gifts.

O’Donnell started Let’s Gift It in 2011, an online group gifting site, but quickly recognized the market wasn’t there. “What... Read more >

Chris Armenio and Art Geigel like having everything they need right at their fingertips. Pairing smart phones with tinkering on a hobbyist level, the two came up with iOTOS, a way to control everything from the garage door opener to the coffee maker through smart phones and tablets.
 
Armenio and Geigel developed iOTOS through the LaunchHouse Accelerator Program last year. Based on a technology known as “the Internet of things,” the tech wirelessly connect... Read more >

NEOSA Tech Week brought 1,600 attendees to events around Cleveland last week, tripling its numbers since it first started three years ago. “It’s really inspiring to see the region recognizing the value and importance of the IT industry in Cleveland,” says NEOSA director Brad Nellis.

From the NASA International Space Apps Challenge, which had 34 local participants in a worldwide event of 9,000, to the much-anticipated Best of Tech Awards, to educational e... Read more >

In the penthouse of the historic Palace Theatre, Charles Stack is hoping to foster a few new tech companies -- 10 to be exact -- in Cleveland’s newest business accelerator, FlashStarts.

Stack started FlashStarts in October 2012 and will hold his inaugural startup class this summer. “Come in with a half-baked idea and we finish baking it, slap some cash for equity, and start it in three months,” he explains.
 
Teams of two or more can apply t... Read more >

Researchers at CWRU have developed a material that can morph from stiff to soft, making its gradient properties potentially useful in medical implants. The research was conducted by professors Stuart Rowan, Justin Fox and Jeffrey Capadona of the macromolecular science and engineering, chemistry and biomedical engineering departments, and Paul Marasco of the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
 
The inspiration for the new materia... Read more >

When Jack Bialosky founded Bialosky and Partners back in 1951, he was just 27 years old and fresh out of serving in World War II. His vision and determination as an architect prompted him to follow his entrepreneurial urges and break away from his employer to pursue the clients he wanted to serve.

“He was working for architect Charles Kohlman at the time,” says Jack Bialosky, Jr. “As more work started coming in, Kohlman wasn’t interested in taking ... Read more >

Global Cleveland recently launched its Asian Initiative, a program to attract and retain Asian talent to the region. “Asians are now the fastest growing and most educated population in the U.S.,” says Meran Rogers, Global Cleveland’s director of community affairs, adding that Cleveland has seen a 49-percent increase in Asians between 2000 and 2010.

Those numbers prompted Global Cleveland to reach out to various groups in the Asian community to identify f... Read more >

Laurel School junior Anamika Veeramani took first place at TiE Ohio’s inaugural TiE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) Business Plan Competition on March 13 for her online science journal for high school students, En Kephalos Science Journal. Veeramani first beat out her fellow Laurel students in a competition before advancing to the regional competition. She won $1,000 and will compete in the TiE Global competition at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia in June.
Read more >