28 August 2012, Munich – The latest spin-off from the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Clueda AG, has been launched to develop and market innovative software for associative knowledge processing and analysis. Initial applications are being developed for the health and financial sectors.
Clueda structures knowledge spaces according to their subject areas. In contrast to current methods, this allows the ever more pressing central problems encountered in the emergence of Big Data, divided knowledge and social networks to be addressed: the small amount of truly interesting information is buried under huge amounts of redundant data. Using semantic approaches, Clueda subsume identical statements, achieving a huge degree of information compression. At the same time, previously hidden information emerges, allowing systematic, objective conclusions to be drawn from large amounts of unstructured data – for example from financial news or patient files. On this basis, Clueda applies methods inspired by systems biology to generate verifiable predictions, such as trading signals or medical diagnoses.
The added value lies not only in the time and cost saved in the evaluation of knowledge, but above all because it allows relevant relationships that would normally be inaccessible in the data flood to be revealed systematically and objectively.
‘Because the semantic search technology from the Helmholtz Zentrum München is also applicable to many non-medical areas, the market potential of Clueda extends far beyond its initial fields of application,’ comments Dr Christian Stein, Ascenion’s CEO. ‘For example, the algorithms are suitable for applications and analysis in the legal and intellectual property fields.’
The method of operation of the Clueda system is based on neural networks, and has been optimized over more than 10 years by the team around Dr Volker Stümpflen, formerly Group Leader for Biological Information Systems at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, and today Chairman of Clueda. ‘Our approach has nothing to do with well-known internet search functions,’ says Dr Stümpflen. ‘Our system can ‘understand’ texts in a similar way to humans, and, like the brain, organizes knowledge into associative networks.’
In the medical sector, a fruitful cooperation has already been forged with the Friedrich Baur Institute at the Klinikum der Universität München, where the Clueda system has been successfully in use for a year. Major target customers in the medical sector are district and university hospitals, as well as pharmaceutical and health insurance companies.
In the financial sector, Clueda has gained the Baader Bank as an investor and customer, and will establish a system capable of extracting trading-relevant financial news in real time from the flow of non-relevant information. ‘The efficient handling of information and the ease with which it can be interpreted are very important to us. Our cooperation with Clueda is aimed at a broad spectrum of applications in the bank, which will also benefit our customers: investors and entrepreneurs alike,’ says Uto Baader, Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Baader Bank. ‘We are delighted to be able to accompany Clueda AG from the beginning as partner and customer.’
‘Our next milestone will be adapting the software to further areas of application, following the conclusion of seed financing and successful market launch in the health and financial sectors,’ adds Dr Stümpflen. ‘Our goal is to transform the overwhelming data flood into usable knowledge in as many areas as possible.’
Ascenion, technology transfer partner of the Helmholtz Zentrum München, has supported the founding of Clueda and holds equity in the company. Proceeds from subsequent sale of shares will flow via the LifeScience Foundation to the institute as research funding.
Contact
Anja Kroke, Corporate Communication
T: +49 (0)89 318814-30, E: kroke@ascenion.de
Ascenion GmbH, Herzogstraße 64, 80803 München, Germany
Dr Volker Stümpflen, Chairman
T: +49 (0)89 4161402-0, E: v.stuempflen@clueda.com
Clueda AG i. Gr., Elsenheimerstraße 59, 80687 München, Germany
About Ascenion GmbH
Ascenion GmbH is an IP asset management company with particular expertise in the life sciences. Ascenion advises and supports public research institutions with regard to the protection and exploitation of their intellectual property (patents, know-how, materials), and initiates and mediates license agreements between research institutions and industry. The company places particular emphasis on coaching company founders and on active equity management. Ascenion was founded in 2001 as a 100% subsidiary of the Life-Science Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Research and has since acquired 23 research institutes in the Helmholtz and Leibniz Associations, together with the Hanover Medical School and the research institute TWINCORE as exclusive partners. Ascenion currently markets around 750 technologies on behalf of these institutes, and closes an average of about 70 revenue-generating agreements between research and industry per year. The team has also coached numerous spin-offs through their foundation and early growth and Ascenion holds equity in 25 of these companies. Ascenion’s headquarters are in Munich, with further offices in Berlin, Braunschweig, Hamburg, Hannover and Neuherberg.
Further information at <link http: www.ascenion.de external-link-new-window>www.ascenion.de
About Clueda AG
Clueda stands for intelligent Big Data solutions in semantic knowledge extraction. Our technologies are based on the newest, systems biology-inspired, semantic methods. Our experiences with the rapid analysis of biomedical publications from large data collections such as PubMed form the basis of our widely applicable core technologies. Using an intelligent combination of semantic and Big Data technologies, Clueda develops new systems for associative knowledge processing, for example in the medical sector, and also – with our investor and customer, the Baader Bank – in the financial sector. In this way, Clueda technology not only extracts truly relevant knowledge, but also generates factual predictions such as trading signals or medical diagnoses. Clueda was founded in 2012 by Dr Volker Stümpflen, Prof. Hans-Werner Mewes and two further partners as a spin-off from the Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at the Helmholtz Zentrum München.
Further information at <link http: www.clueda.com external-link-new-window>www.clueda.com
