A local medical high-tech company is expanding and adding jobs.

The company is called VisualDx and it’s been around since 1999. They design software used to help diagnose various medical conditions. Now, the firm plans to add 21 jobs in Rochester while retaining 39 others.

VisualDx will lease an additional 5,000 square feet at its current location inside the former Valley Cadillac Building on East Avenue.

That is located in Rochester’s Downtown Innovation Zone. New York State is providing up to $600,000 through the Excelsior Tax Credit Program. Another $100,000 will be provided through a Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council Grant.

Dr. Art Papier is the CEO and co-founder of VisualDx. He says his company depends on the kind of skilled workforce they can find in Rochester, including experts in optics and software engineers as well as the abilities present at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

“This company is bringing together experts in medicine and experts in imaging and software development. It’s really, I think, what Rochester is about, is all the talent that we have here; so there couldn’t be a better city in this country to do this kind of work,” Papier told WXXI News.

Among the new projects VisualDx is working on, is an app that will allow a consumer to use their iPhone to analyze photos to help a health professional diagnose a particular condition.

“You can embed into the iPhone now the ability to analyze photographs, so we now have that ability and we’re going to expand into the consumer space, so we’re working on a new product that involves kind of the iPhone and the smartphone as your copilot for health,” Papier explained.

That app may be completed sometime next year.

But Papier emphasizes that any app is not going to replace the need for medical professionals.

“Patients will have these tools that will guide them so they can work better with their physicians, so, really (we) want to be clear about that. We’re not a company that thinks that artificial intelligence is going to replace the need for human judgement.”