Member Article

York Science Park tenants develop software with help from the Technology Strategy Board

Text Mining Solutions Ltd., which operates from York Science Park’s Catalyst building, has started production on a new visualisation program called TMS Prospector with help from an Innovation Voucher from the Technology Strategy Board.

Text Mining Solutions was established in 2011 and started life in York Science Park’s purpose built incubation space, Springboard.

In 2013 it took an office in The Catalyst and currently employs two people, with plans to recruit more as it develops.

It uses natural language processing technology and visualisation tools to aid discovery of new ideas, concepts and information to help its customers fully exploit their own information assets and those in the wider public domain, such as scientific journals, patents and other electronic records.

It is currently working with organisations including Edwards Vacuum Pumps and the York Health Economics Consortium, and is focussing on working with clients in the scientific research and development and business intelligence sectors.

After receiving the Innovation Voucher in October 2013, the company has worked with specialists from the University of Sheffield’s Computer Science Department to develop the new program, which sits on top of the records extracted by Text Mining Solutions’ existing text mining process.

It provides a simple to use interface for querying the data and produces easy to read, visual representations of the outcome. TMS Prospector can be used with any text data set which has been extracted using TMS searching services.

Steve Brewer, director of Text Mining Solutions said: “In making best use of the power of text mining three key elements need to be combined: collecting, processing and visualising text data.

“The first two elements are addressed by a structured approach to searching and storing of data, but it is the third element – visualisation – which brings the results to life.

“By being awarded a Technology Strategy Board Innovation Voucher, we have been able to collaborate with the University of Sheffield to develop this new visualisation programme which we are now ready to take to market.”

Steve continued: “The TMS Prospector system we have developed is very flexible and powerful in the way it handles data.

“It helps to uncover hidden relationships embedded deep within the literature and is used by leading edge organisations, research scientists and information specialists looking to progress the knowledge in their given area of expertise.

“We are very excited about its potential and see it as filling a real gap in the market.”

Tracey Smith, MD of York Science Park, said: “Innovation Vouchers provide funding to enable businesses to work with external experts to gain new knowledge to help them innovate, develop and grow.

“In this case the Innovation Voucher has been a real boost to Text Mining Solutions and the potential for the TMS Prospector is huge.

“They are a brilliant example of the type of innovation and entrepreneurship that we see in so many businesses at York Science Park and we wish them great success for the future.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .