Disease Diagnotstic Group, LLC (DDG) is commercializing the Rapid Assessment of Malaria (RAM) device to provide a full solution to the malaria diagnostic, treatment, and tracking space.

Founded in August 2012, the social venture has patented a mechanical approach to diagnosis by manipulating the magnetic malaria hemozoin to attenuate light. Having deployed prototypes to Peru and India for clinical testing, DDG is seeking product approval for commercialization in 2014. DDG expects to steadily capture market share, ultimately becoming the worldwide standard for point of care malaria diagnosis.

John Lewandowski (CEO/Founder) holds an MBA from CWRU and Dr. Brian T. Grimberg (CMO/President) is a malaria expert, the original inventor, and an assistant professor in the Center for Global Health and Infectious Disease at CWRU.

DDG received an Innovation Fund A grant in August 2013.

Website: http://www.diseasediagnostic.com/

The goal of the OCTT is to help community inventors who don't have tech transfer offices at their disposal turn their ideas into products.

Four Northeast Ohio startups will receive financial help to launch products from the Incubator at Magnet. Magnet, a nonprofit that champions advanced manufacturing in Northeast Ohio, said nine companies submitted applications for the Magnet Product Acceleration & Technical Assistance (MPAcT) grant. The four companies with winning submissions are Disease Diagnostic Group LLC; DragonID LLC; Folio Photonics; and Motion Resolution.

Biolectrics combines medical, biological, and electrical research to develop a pioneering new treatment for severe gum disease with a family of oral care devices called the OraFlow™.

Website: http://biolectrics.net/

Growth Equity Investment to Accelerate Market Penetration

June 18, 2013: COMS Interactive, LLC (also known as "Clinical Outcomes Management Systems" or "COMS"), announced today that it has secured a minority investment of $21 million from Summit Partners, a global growth equity firm. The investment will be used for company expansion and adjacent market product offerings. In addition, a portion of the capital will be used for redemption of COMS common stock holdings. Current investors in COMS include Zapis Capital Group; Next Sparc, LLC; and Portal Capital, LLC.

The COMS flagship product, Daylight IQ™, is a Software as a Service (SaaS) product suite that focuses on managing health and disease profiles of elderly residents requiring post-acute care. The company's robust post-acute software aligns with two of Summit Partner's preferred investment sectors: healthcare and technology. Collectively, these two disciplines account for more than 250 companies in which Summit has invested to date.

"The additional capital resources provided by Summit Partners will support a further expansion of the COMS products and service offerings in the skilled nursing, assisted living and home care markets," noted Edward J. Tromczynski, Chief Executive Officer, COMS Interactive, LLC. "We are particularly pleased to welcome Summit Partners to the COMS initiative and look forward to the additional business expertise Summit provides."

The deployment of Daylight IQ™ enhances the quality of care provided to residents in long-term care facilities, while simultaneously improving revenue opportunities. This is accomplished by closely tracking changes in the resident's condition and initiating appropriate clinical interventions at the point of care. This, in turn, reduces avoidable hospital readmissions and equates to improved clinical and financial outcomes. To date, COMS' customers enjoy a 50% reduction in return to hospital and a 60% reduction in premature mortality rates.

“COMS delivers an innovative SaaS offering that provides nursing homes and assisted living facilities with an affordable platform to better manage and improve the quality of care,” said Mark deLaar, a Managing Director with Summit Partners, who will join the COMS Board of Directors. "We are impressed by the strong ROI guarantee that COMS is able to demonstrate to its clients."

As part of the financing package and progressive strategy already in place, COMS will use the investment to expand its post-acute care products and services throughout North America. In addition, the company plans to advance its clinical quality assurance and performance improvement initiatives.

About COMS Interactive, LLC
COMS Interactive has partnered with twelve state health care associations in deploying processes and systems that stabilize and improve resident health while improving financial outcomes for skilled nursing facilities. The Daylight IQ™ Software as a Service (SaaS) product combines business administration, disease management and long-term healthcare knowledge to empower the nursing team, reduce medical errors, more efficiently address resident healthcare needs and increase facility revenues. With customers in 38 states, COMS offers a combination of clinical and technical processes which saves millions of dollars a year in preventable hospital re-admissions. Additional information regarding COMS Interactive and Daylight IQ™ is available at www.comsllc.com or by contacting COMS at 330.650.9900.

About Summit Partners
Summit Partners is a growth equity firm that invests in rapidly growing companies. Founded in 1984, Summit has raised nearly $15 billion in capital, and provides equity and credit for growth, recapitalizations, and management buyouts. Summit has invested in more than 365 companies globally in technology, healthcare and other growth industries. These companies have completed 130 public offerings, and more than 135 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Notable investments in the healthcare and software sectors include: Diagnostic Hybrids, GoldenGate Software, HealthCare Partners, Heart to Heart Hospice, Hyperion Software, McAfee, MDVIP, Postini, RightNow Technologies and Solutionreach. Summit Partners maintains offices in Boston, Menlo Park, London and Mumbai. For additional information, visit www.summitpartners.com.

COMS Interactive, LLC focuses on processes and systems that stabilize and improve resident health, while increasing revenues for Skilled Nursing facilities and simultaneously reducing overall costs for the payor. This win-win scenario creates improvements that pay for themselves while enhancing a facility's reputation, winning resident referrals and developing family loyalty.

COMS Interactive combines disease management, long term healthcare knowledge and business administration to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions, improve resident healthcare and increase facility revenue. These processes can save lives and billions of dollars, and can turn every COMS facility into a profit center filled with healthier, more stable residents.

Website: www.comsllc.com

BoxCast, a company in Cleveland that has developed a plug-and-play video broadcast system called the Broadcast Box, has received a $250,000 investment commitment from nonprofit venture development organization JumpStart Inc.

Public Insight Corporation is the developer of 360-Public.com, a public website that transforms community data into valuable insight for communication, analysis, research, and education. 360-Public is free to the general public with paid subscriptions for broader, advanced analysis and application. The company is using the funding to market its launch in Ohio and prepare for a national launch in late 2013. For more information, visit www.360-Public.com.

LARAD, Inc. is using virus-like particle technology to produce universal multivalent vaccines and diagnostics for food-animal diseases. The company's initial focus is on products licensed from The Ohio State University for an immunosuppressive disease in poultry caused by the infectious bursal disease virus. Its genetically engineered universal vaccine can protect against multiple strains of the virus and its flexibility allows new antigens to easily be introduced, allowing it to keep pace with new antigenic changes in the virus.

The company received a $25,000 Innovation Fund A award in May 2013 and the $100,000 B award in August 2014.

Website: https://www.laradinc.com/

May 28, 2013: The Innovation Fund, founded by the Lorain County Community College Foundation and supported by several Northeast Ohio university partners, is awarding $350,000 to seven technology-based startups.

Dragon Intelinet ($25,000 | Shaker Heights)
Dragon Intelinet is developing a medical device for use in the newly FDA-approved transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedure, during which a replacement valve is collapsed to a very small diameter, crimped onto a balloon device, and positioned inside the patient's natural aortic valve. The balloon is then inflated, causing the replacement valve to expand, pushing the faulty valve aside. Dragon Intelinet's simple-to-use filter technology captures and removes dislodged debris, which can lead to clots and stroke, during the procedure. The company is using the funding to further test its prototype in a clinical lab and begin trials.

Skysun ($25,000 | Bay Village)
Skysun's patent-pending system of ganged heliostats (devices that typically include a rotating plane mirror that reflects sunlight toward a predetermined target) decreases solar power generation cost and complexity. Today, most heliostats are aimed by one drive unit mounted on one pier. The company's arrays allow at least 20 heliostats to be aimed by four drives all mounted on two piers. Skysun plans to use the funding to construct and test is prototype.

Right Time ($25,000 | Mansfield)
Right Time is building a mathematical system that measures criminal offender rehabilitation efforts in real-time and produces computer-generated, evidence-based prioritized reports that can be used to achieve successful rehabilitation outcomes. The patent-pending Personal Achievement Scoring System will act as a unifying data repository for multiple sources of input and use the information to provide a safety measure for the public, scorecard for rehabilitation provider proficiency, and proof of offender pro-social reintegration. The company will use the funding to finalize the system's algorithms and complete the platform.

LARAD ($25,000 | Wooster)
The company is using virus-like-particle technology to produce universal multivalent vaccines and diagnostics for food-animal diseases. LARAD's initial focus is on products licensed from Ohio State University for an immunosuppressive disease in poultry caused by the infectious bursal disease virus. The company's genetically engineered universal vaccine can protect against multiple strains of the virus and its flexibility allows new antigens to easily be introduced, allowing it to keep pace with new antigenic changes in the virus. The Innovation Fund award will be used to generate data needed for a manufacture license from the USDA and to purchase laboratory space and equipment.

The Learning Egg ($50,000 | North Jackson)
The Learning Egg has developed a web-based subscription application that allows teachers to quickly and easily create a learning assessment, automatically grade 100 pages a minute, and generate an analysis of student performance. With the funds, The Learning Egg will execute its product roadmap and go-to-market strategy.

Public Insight Corporation ($100,000 | Hudson)
Public Insight Corporation has developed 360-Public, a public data platform that provides insight into livability and performance of regions, government, and schools to promote clarity, efficiency, and collaboration. The Software-as-a-Service integrates extensive, now-disparate data from over 100 data series and more than 12 sources into a single, unified database. The data is optimized for socioeconomic analysis, public performance evaluation, benchmarking, and collaboration. The company is using the funding to market its launch in Ohio and prepare for a national launch in late 2013.

MegaJoule Storage ($100,000 | Cleveland)
MegaJoule Storage, Inc. is commercializing high performance electrochemical capacitors for power quality and energy storage in electric utility, industrial, and commercial markets. Its product platform enhances power quality, reliability, and cost in both commercial and industrial renewable energy and smart grid implementation. The Innovation Fund award will help the company conduct market research on targeted vertical markets and design and build a prototype system to field test for customer validation.

With this most recent round of quarterly funding awards, the Innovation Fund has made 128 awards to 107 companies totaling nearly $7 million. These companies have raised $82.9 million follow-on funding, created more than 400 jobs, and provided more than 150 internships to students.

About the Innovation Fund
The Innovation Fund, founded by the Lorain County Community College Foundation, is Northeast Ohio's most active early-stage fund. It makes awards of up to $100,000 to technology-based companies so they can validate their technologies and business concepts. The Innovation Fund averages six funding awards each quarter and fills the capital needs of businesses at the earliest stage of development, before they can attract angel and venture capital funding. Innovation Fund awards are made with funds from the Ohio Third Frontier, which have been combined with matching support and contributions from the Innovation Fund partners. These partners include the University of Akron, the University of Akron Research Foundation, Cleveland State University, the Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE), the Lorain County Community College Foundation, Stark State College, Youngstown State University, the Youngstown Business Incubator, and Northeast Ohio Medical University.