Thursday, April 14, 2016

Mass Innovation Nights #MIN85 Recap

Mass Innovation Nights celebrated its 7th birthday with another wonderful product launch event at MITRE in Bedford. This was the second time MITRE sponsored and hosted a Mass Innovation Nights event. Last time was back in July of 2015. They provided food too -- everybody was talking about the Philly cheese steak egg rolls. Oh, and Suja was there handing out free juice again - always welcome.
deepSQL
This month's event had a security, big data/big cloud, and health theme. All the tables were busy with people checking out products ranging from graphical interfaces for analytics to a device to assess coughing via telemedicine and so much more. As is my usual lately, I didn't manage to talk to or photograph every exhibitor.  I did see lots of interesting stuff that I liked, though.
Security Innovation -- Best Costume
The four chosen presenters were:

The student startup showcase included Medley and closeFriends from the Accelerate program at Wentworth and CoughCounter from Tufts. The student startups also presented.
Rulex
I liked Rulex's approach to simplifying configuration for analytics processes using a graphical UI. Making it easier to seek answers in big data seemed to be a theme within a theme, as Podium and deepSQL also tackled getting the most out of big data.
WindTalker Security
WindTalker Security offers an innovative way of managing security for patient information. You can make certain information available only to defined roles. I was calling it "differential security" but I'm not sure that fully captures it.  Imagine that your doctor can see patient names, but researchers can't or the billing office can see social security numbers, but telemetry can't. This makes it a whole lot easier to transmit medical forms and documents, x-rays, and telemetry feeds securely over both public and private networks without compromising patient confidentiality. This got my vote for favorite.
Kyrus Mobile
Kyrus Mobile offers a solution for distracted driving safety in the corporate fleet environment. They make it possible to enforce a "no cellphone" policy and collect the data to prove compliance. Kyrus was very popular with the audience.

Podium Data Presentation
Podium Data  simplifies enterprise data management with an integrated platform that harnesses the power of Hadoop and makes it easy to deploy.
Cough Counter
Cough Counter, one of the student startups, is developing a low-cost system to monitor and measure how many times a patient coughs, upload the data to a server, and analyze that data to assess the recovery of patients suffering from respiratory illness like TB. They've been collaborating with a group in Lima, Peru and with Johns Hopkins University.
People Hedge Presenting
PeopleHedge is a one stop shop for international commerce: find your international customers, manage global payments, and connect to capital all in one spot.

Security Innovation did a demo of  CMD+CTRL Hackathon, a simulation to train developers in identifying security vulnerabilities and deal with them.

Security Innovation Presenting
Ethoswell helps manage the connection to complementary healthcare providers like chiropractors, dietitians, and acupuncturists. (No photo - camera glitched on it.)

In the  fan voting, the grand prize winner was Kyrus Mobile and the other favorites were WindTalker Security, Podium Data, and People Hedge.

There were a ton of experts including folks from MITRE available to discuss cyber security and intellectual property rights. Other experts in business insurance, venture capital and internet policy rounded out the Experts Corner.  The wonderful people from the Bedford Chamber of Commerce and from the Advanced Cyber Security Center provided their expertise as well.  The Bedford Chamber of Commerce folks graciously agreed to pose for the "Experts Looking Expert" photo (with their free Suja juices).
Bedford Chamber of Commerce Looking Expert and Enjoying Free Suja Juices