Invest Nova Scotia has announced payroll rebate agreements for two Halifax startups: medical scheduling platform Virtual Hallway and oceans data specialists Global Spatial Technology Solutions, or GSTS.

Payroll rebate agreements are the process by which a government subsidizes some of a business’s payroll costs to incentivize job creation. In this case, Virtual Hallway could receive as much as $552,300 over five years, with Invest Nova Scotia estimating the company could spend $7.7 million in salaries and benefits over the same period. GSTS is receiving up to $664,200, with the province anticipating staffing costs on the company side of about $9.7 million.

Doctors Jacob Cookey, Luke Napier and Daniel Rasic created Virtual Hallway in 2019 because they were struggling to schedule and document the phone consults they were performing. Justin Hartlen, the former head of Covina Biomedical and a life sciences veteran, joined as CEO in February of last year.

Initially launched as an online spreadsheet for physicians to book phone consults with specialists who had posted information about their availability, the current version of the service offers the same functionality in a more user-friendly package. The specialist also writes a consult report that is shared with the primary care doctor, and the process of billing the provincial government is automated.

GSTS, meanwhile, sells cloud-based software for analyzing and predicting the movements of ships. The software, OCIANA, aggregates satellite, weather and port data, along with other sources of tracking information, and uses it to make predictions about the movements and behaviour of ocean-going vessels.

The business grew out of CEO Richard Kolacz’s work as vice president of business development at another startup, COM DEV, that was tasked by the Canadian and American governments with developing an unclassified satellite system for tracking the movements of ships around the world.