Cloud-based platform receives $588,000 loan from feds

The federal government is loaning RBB Innovations Ltd. $588,000 over the next two years to help the Sault Ste. Marie-based company advance its One Human Service Network Platform, which consolidates and streamlines data within the public health and human services sector.

The platform is actively being used by 26 municipalities across Ontario, including Thunder Bay, Sudbury, North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

“We’re migrating individual software tools on to the Microsoft Azure cloud that will allow us to be able to scale, be able to cycle up new areas that want the platform, and be able to support the spikes in growth,” said One Human Service Network president and CEO Darryl Buck.

In 2010, RBB Innovations Ltd. purchased the platform from the Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre, which developed the initial prototype in Sault Ste. Marie.

That prototype platform was first used by the District of Sault Ste. Marie Social Services Administration Board between 2008 and 2010.  

The local company also received $50,000 — some of which is repayable — in CanExport funding from the federal government last year to explore opportunities in the United States.

“It fits perfectly into what this government’s trying to do in supporting the innovation economy, and we have a lot of great stories like Darryl’s story here in Sault Ste. Marie with RBB,” said Sault Ste. Marie MP Terry Sheehan. “We’re pleased to support a business that creating 23 jobs here in Sault Ste. Marie and across Ontario, and it also supports middle-class families that need to find childcare — childcare that’s critical for them to be able to function.”

Buck says the One Human Service Network platform will ultimately help the childcare sector across Ontario by facilitating the collection and organization of detailed personal information for clients and their families.

“It’s exciting, because our mission is to help families and to help the service providers that serve those families through technology and partnership, so it’s very exciting to see in different communities when we roll out (the technology) that we’re not only a marketing tool that help families very easily find and apply to the licence centres and homes that they are interested in, but we also provide tools to the government service providers around subsidy, special needs co-ordination, etc., that use the platform as well.

“So it’s very exciting going into a new community and then recognizing the benefits of such a technology.”

RBB Innovations Ltd. got its start in 1996 by offering technology solutions to government agencies locally, eventually becoming involved with licensed childcare in 2008.