VisualDx is Rochester NY’s innovation zone poster child

[ROCHESTER, NY – February 12, 2016] – From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester’s Downtown Innovation Zone has an eclectic mix of tech firms, animation studios, art galleries, software companies and business incubators.

But the woman charged with wrangling these businesses believes the shining paragon of the Downtown Innovation Zone, or DIZ, is medical imaging company VisualDx. The company, which moved from Henrietta to Rochester, plans to hire in 2016, is launching a new product March 1.

The DIZ wrangler, Heidi Zimmer-Meyer of the Rochester Downtown Development Corp., said VisualDx is exactly the type of tech company that downtown Rochester needs.

“This is the first company that’s in the medical space and obviously this is technology driven,” she said. “And they’re doing something different. They are so different and they’ve become so successful so rapidly.”

Founded in 1999, VisualDx has a collection of medical photos that staffers have embedded into computer software so that doctors can reference them when trying to diagnose patients with the correct ailment. In its early stages, the company had to pay for these photos, but these days, partnering doctors and medical universities have been sending the company photos for their software.

VisualDx CEO Art Papier moved to the Rochester area in 1990 to start studying dermatology. He started practicing in 1993 and said he had been working on a way to show physicians images for diagnosis long before the company started.

Up until now the photos on VisualDx, Papier said, focused on skin conditions like pictures of hives or eczema. This spring, the company is going to release images on all diseases and ailments, from chest pain and double vision to rashes. With the new batch of photos, the company will have 120,000 images.

Zimmer-Meyer said the company is also interesting because it is based here, but its software is starting to grab overseas customers.

“Their technology is on the front line and in the hands of doctors,” she said.

The company employs 40 people, mostly software engineers, but also a mix of graphic designers and medical librarians.

VisualDx has more than 1,500 customers from private and public medical institutions and federal government entities such as the Veterans Administration, Army, and the Air Force. The customers buy VisualDx’s software and have access to the photos on desktop computers or mobile devices.

Eric Ingerowski is a pediatrician in Penfield who has used VisualDx for four years.

“I got hooked right away,” he said. “I could easily see the impact of it.”

Ingerowski said he uses the software at least three times a day. He remembers one time recently when it helped him make the right call on a patient.

A woman came in who had dark spots on her leg as if someone wrote on her with a marker. She thought it was a rash and Ingerowski was leaning toward that diagnosis too. Then he typed her symptoms into VisualDx and it turns out that she actually had phytophotodermatitis, a skin disease you can get when citrus fruit juice has been on your body while you’re exposed to the sun for too long.

The woman had been trying to dye her hair with lemon juice, Ingerowski said, and apparently some juice got on her leg.

Ingerowski said doctors have had to rely on memory to look at symptoms and diagnose the right illness. With computer-aided diagnostics, physicians can make the right decision every time and not have to refer patients to a specialist.

“It doesn’t take the place of a doctor,” he said. “but this has even come up with diagnoses that we wouldn’t have come up with.”

Nancy Adams, executive director of Monroe County’s Medical Society, said VisualDx provides a great service, particularly in helping physicians make the correct diagnosis the first time.

If doctors make the wrong diagnosis, generally speaking, the illness doesn’t go away or symptoms can get worse, Adams said. But if the doctor gets it right, a patient is cured faster, symptoms weaken quicker or, for tougher illnesses, treatment can begin sooner.

Adams said VisualDx really stepped on the scene in the months after the 9/11 attacks when physicians started seeing people with Anthrax-related rashes.

Most doctors have never seen what that looks like, but VisualDx “had really excellent visuals” to help doctors eyeball what the outbreak looks like.

Adams said many Medical Society members use VisualDx and like that they can reference the images while inside existing software at their medical center or hospital.

Papier said U.S. doctors like Ingerowski have been happy with the software, but the company has been hearing from international hospitals and doctors who want the software offered overseas. The company is in the middle of trying to make that happen, Papier said, but it’s going to involve translating the software to different languages and making the software home screen populate with common diseases in different countries.

To help with that and to do customer service support for the new batch of photos, Papier said VisualDx plans to hire at least 10 more staffers in 2016. The CEO said moving downtown was part of a larger recruitment ploy to attract the necessary software engineers.

“We’re going to need more RIT grads and UR grads and we want to keep them here,” Papier said. “The millennials would much rather be downtown.”

VisualDx originally planned to move into a space at Village Gate, but a fire just a week before the move made their space uninhabitable. Zimmer-Meyer with RDDC said VisualDx scrambled to find a spot and settled on its current location in the Valley Building at 339 East Ave.

“And it ended up being a great location for them,” she said.

Since moving downtown, Papier said he has networked with other companies more often than he would have had VisualDx stayed in Henrietta. The contacts he has made have not created any new business opportunities yet, but Papier said it’s been helpful to get a sense for what other companies are doing in case there’s a chance for partnership.

“We’re just seizing what Rochester is all about now, which is imaging,” Papier said. “All the companies are about optics, photonics and imaging and we’re downtown.”

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