Thomas MacMillan Photo
The inventor shows MED-SEG to the senators.
Fitz Walker has expanded his Newhallville lab and hired three new employees, bringing him another step closer to revolutionizing mammograms with technology designed for outer space.
Walker celebrated his recent growth on Tuesday at the Shelton Avenue headquarters of his company, Bartron. He hosted state officials including state Sens. Martin Looney and Toni Harp for a press conference and tour of the premises.
The senators were there to showcase the hiring of three new Bartron employees under a new state program called the Subsidized Training and Education Program, or STEP-Up. The program, created last October in a special legislative session, offers six months of subsidies for the training and salary of new hires at qualifying small businesses. The new employees have to be unemployed, live in a town with more than 80,000 people and high unemployment, and have a family income of less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Ann Harrison, the programs local coordinator, can be emailed .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Just after 11 a.m., Walker (pictured) offered Sens. Looney and Harp a primer on Bartron’s ground-breaking imaging technology, called MED-SEG.
Ten years ago, when Walker was still teaching at Eli Whitney vocational high school, he attended a conference hosted by NASA, which was looking to find terrestrial applications for some of its extra-terrestrial technologies. Walker began working with NASA on adapting image analysis technology designed for studying the surface of distant planets. Walker has developed a way to use the technology for medical purposes, like analyzing mammograms to eliminate false positives.
It’s a form of “data mining” that improves on existing medical imaging systems, Walker told the senators. It can cut costs and improve health care, he said. “It does have a social benefit as well as an economic benefit for us.”
Walker’s system uses a “patented super computer” to analyze images used by hospitals. Radiologists can use the “FDA cleared, award winning” MED-SEG to communicate via a private, secure “cloud” with the super computer that processes the images, Walker said.
After congratulations from the senators and Deputy Labor Commissioner Dennis Murphy, Walker introduced his three new employees.
Jayne Krasney (pictured), a Cheshire woman who was hired June 4 as an administrative assistant, said she had been unemployed for 26 months. “After a long haul, I’m employed and I’m happy.”
Jose Sanchez, who’s 38 and lives on New Haven’s East Shore, said he was also hired June 4, as an equipment tester, after six months of unemployment.
Tony DeCusati (pictured), who’s 59, got choked up as a he spoke about Monday, his first day on the job at Bartron.
DeCusati was laid off in September from his job as an engineer at Honeywell. Walker hired him as a document administrator to help Bartron meet all the requirements of the federal Food and Drug Administration.
“When you’ve been through what I’ve been through,” he said, “you get emotional when you finally see the end of the tunnel.”
Walker laughs with a NASA staffer about his first home-made “supercomputer” formed out of salvaged PCx.