Medusa Medical Technologies Inc. has attracted $900,000 in equity investment from three investors, a sum that will be added to its Atlantic Innovation Fund financing to help develop the next generation of its technology.

Last week, the Halifax company, whose technology allows paramedics to report data electronically to hospitals or health centres, received a $2.6-million loan from the innovation fund, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s vehicle for funding major research projects.

Medusa chairman Glen Dexter said after the announcement that the company has also raised $300,000 each from three existing shareholders: Dexter’s own company, Canadian International Capital Inc.; Innovacorp; and Technology Venture Corp. of Moncton.

Medusa joins the ranks of several Atlantic companies that are raising healthy levels of follow-on funding this month. Karma Gaming of Halifax has raised $4 million from Rho Canada Ventures and Innovacorp, and Introhive of Fredericton and Washington has just announced a $1.5-million funding from Build Ventures.

Innovacorp in 2006 joined a group of investors to sink $4 million into Medusa, which has proven one of the agency’s better investments from its early days in venture capital. Since then, Medusa has grown into one of the world’s leading providers of communications equipment for paramedics. The company has clients in seven countries (it closed a deal in Australia for the first time two weeks ago) and employs 40 people, 38 of them in Nova Scotia.

“Over the last seven or eight years, our revenues are up by a factor of about five,” said Dexter. “With this (new funding), we hope to double or triple revenues from where we are today. I’d say that will take three or four years.”

Medusa began with a vision of providing paramedics with a simple technical device to instantly record the details of a patient’s medical condition and transmit them instantly to a hospital or other medical institution. Its Siren ePCR Suite is now used by 60 per cent of the ambulances in England, and in such Canadian markets as Nova Scotia, Alberta and Ottawa.

Dan MacDonald, the vice-president of marketing, said the company has already invested $8 million in research and development, and the result of that investment has been a payback of $20 million in revenue.

The new equity funding and AIF loan will finance the development of a new version of Siren so it can input and process more patient care information before a patient is taken to hospital. It will add features and offer greater flexibility to paramedics and other emergency medical professionals.

Dexter said the company’s clients are becoming more involved in community health, and paramedics are actually spending time in nursing homes, monitoring the residents’ health and giving advice.

As this work becomes more common for paramedics, the Siren system will need to add features to help paramedics identify and act on common ailments for the elderly.