IPSNP Computing, the Saint John company whose software conducts industrial-strength searches of vast numbers of data banks, is looking for a few end-users to beta test its HYDRA product early next year ahead of the full launch in the late summer or fall of 2014.

The company, whose name is pronounced IP-snip, is on the cutting edge of semantic technology, which means it helps end-users like pharmaceutical companies find specific, often highly complicated, information.

It is now looking for researchers and knowledge workers in about 10 to 15 companies and research organizations that could serve as beta testers. The candidates would be independent companies that are not affiliated with IPSNP, but are willing to work with it in testing the product, working out the kinks and providing feedback.

CEO Chris Baker said they may end up being preferred customers getting discounts for the specialized query engine.

 “Once you have web service access to data, we can tackle a lot more complex and different queries than what you can do with a single, static data warehouse,” said Baker, in an interview Tuesday.

Baker, a computer science professor at University of New Brunswick in Saint John, describes HYDRA as “an industrial-strength version of a deep-web query engine.” A standard search engine uses a series of keywords to scan a vast number of HTML pages and delivers options to browse.

 “What HYDRA does is use semantics to search through thousands or even tens of thousands of databases that are accessible through the Internet and returns real data. It is a huge help to academic, clinical and industry researchers who need to extract specific information from a seemingly endless network of data banks.

In as little as a few minutes, HYDRA can produce results from these data banks and present them in a single spreadsheet that’s easy for the researcher to access and analyze. The technology, for example, could help pharma companies find all the drugs available in Canada that include an immunosuppressant. Or it could find what drugs were prescribed to patients across a hospital in the three weeks before they were hospitalized.

IPSNP now has an online prototype that people can test to witness the power of the search functions. It has just received approval for a $98,000 financing from a federal government program, which it will use to develop new user interfaces.

That interface, said Baker, will help non-technical people better leverage the power of the HYDRA technology. IPSNP expects to complete the interface in January or February, roll an early version of the product out in the spring, with a full launch in the fall of 2014.

The company has just hired its seventh employee, a PhD graduate from Italy. It also demonstrated the product last week at the Semantic Trilogy Conference in Montreal, a get-together for about 120 delegates interested in semantic technologies.

Baker was the co-chair of the conference, which comprised three smaller conferences: the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology; the Canadian Semantic Web Symposium; and the Data Integration in Life Science.