Interested in learning more about opportunities in digital health? HealthBeat, VentureBeat’s health conference takes place on May 20 and 21.

The Iron Yard has launched the Southeast’s first digital health accelerator, proving that innovation shouldn’t be confined to Silicon Valley.

The Iron Yard’s tech collective was formed by a group of locals in the small city of Greenville, South Carolina. The original idea was to inspire networking among like-minded folk, but the Iron Yard quickly spiralled into a tech accelerator, a coding academy for kids, and a coworking space.

And now, the founders are asking entrepreneurs to fix some of the biggest flaws with our current health system.

Entrepreneurs enrolled in the accelerator will receive $20,000 in seed capital funding, three months of mentorship and training, a full year of free coworking space in Spartanburg, S.C., and the opportunity to demo their product at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Given the complexities of the space (founders will need to ensure their product is HIPPA compliant, for instance), the accelerator will provide free legal consultations.

The accelerator is looking for a wide range of ideas — fitness apps, web-based electronic medical records, “big data” analysis tools to name a few — but the program does not support medical devices at this stage, Iron Yard managing director Peter Barth said in an interview.

In the last five years, health accelerators have popped up around the country, and venture funding has drastically increased. In order to compete with established programs like HealthBox and RockHealth, the accelerator has signed up brand-name partners and mentors from JM Smith, Mayo Clinic, AbbVie (Abbott Labs), Zebra Technologies, and BMW.

For entrepreneurs who crave small town living and a break from Silicon Valley, The Iron Yard may be the best bet. “We want everyone to have the opportunity and ability to have an effect on the digital world and an effect on society,” said cofounder Eric Dodds in a recent interview.

The three-month digital health program begins on July 15. Click here to apply and learn more.

Images courtesy of the Iron Yard

Most of this heat starts at The Iron Yard, a local tech collective that involves collaborative spaces, an accelerator program, and a code academy. It began as the separate undertakings of people passionate about technology and has grown into a multicylinder “steam engine” of creativity.

Source: Flickr user Olympusjgreen

A nascent startup scene takes root among old trees.

Lighting the coals

Eric Dodds is a South Carolina native who helped found The Iron Yard after beginning his career in marketing. He discovered that his interests really lay in building websites and products rather than promoting those of other people, but Greenville did not have a strong support network for startups. Serendipitously, he met a few like-minded locals: an entrepreneur named Peter Barth, who was trying to build an accelerator program; Mason Stewart, who worked to start code school for kids; and Kate McCarthy, a recent transplant eager to give back to her community. Together, they combined their various endeavors and expertise to form The Iron Yard.

“A lot of the time being in a small Southeastern town and having a love for technology and design don’t go together,” Dodds said in an interview with VentureBeat. “We are passionate about changing that. There are people doing really cool stuff here. Peter and I combined forces with a co-working space in a crazy code and design collision that resulted in one brand called The Iron Yard. Our grand vision is to create a full circle of awesomeness for startups here in Greenville.”

Stoking the fire

Out of that collision emerged other ideas and projects. After hearing the founder of CoderDojo speak at a conference, Stewart wanted to start a similar program in Greenville, but he did not have the resources. The Iron Yard set up a trial class of 15 students.

It was so popular that it quickly grew to 70 kids and four classes a week, with a long waiting list. The free course teaches children to program in Scratch, a highly visual, kid-friendly programming language created at MIT. The students learn how to build their own video games and also how to use an Arduino board to built their own game controllers.

A student at CoderDojo shows off her work.

“Regardless of your age, programming should be fun,” Stewart said. “We give priority to kids in lower income neighborhoods and minorities, and half of our classes are girls. We are seeing people that you don’t generally see in programming doing really great with it.

“My goal is that any kid who stuck with CoderDojo all the way through high school is just as good or better than someone with a computer science degree and could start working as a full blown engineer with a great salary right away.”

This spring, The Iron Yard is also launching an intensive code school for adults. The program lasts three months and teaches front-end engineering, focusing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The tuition is $9,750 and includes a new Apple laptop and housing. Students also get guaranteed job placement in six months — or a full refund. The students will be able to interact with people in the co-working space and the companies participating in the accelerator to create an interconnected support network.

“If people don’t think the world we live in is already completely digital, I think they are kidding themselves,” Dodds said. “The companies we have in our accelerator and other companies in Greenville can’t find enough talented developers to build they things they need. Our education system isn’t preparing kids for this world. We want everyone to have the opportunity and ability to have an effect on the digital world and an effect on society.”

Welding it all together

While code academies are designed to jumpstart lucrative technology careers, the accelerator program is about building strong, sustainable, local companies that stimulate innovation, jobs, and give the startup ecosystem firm roots in Greenville. Kate McCarthy is the director of programs at The Iron Yard. She is originally from Southern California, went to college in Canada, and ended up in Greenville after a stint in Habitat for Humanity. Her passion is community development, and she is committed to promoting entrepreneurship as a path to economic success.

Developers and designers collaborate to turn their ideas into active businesses.

“I love to see people striking out on their own to build something that matters,” she said. “It is those people and those companies that really drive a community. Some of the barriers that exist to old educational institutions and financial success are freed up here so we can serve a larger demographic. This is a textile town reinventing itself from the kids up. We are trying to lift a whole state up through entrepreneurship.”

The accelerator program is currently accepting applications for its second class. The first class had 10 participants. Each receives $20,000 in seed funding, work space, mentorship, and guidance on how to achieve their milestones.

This fall, The Iron Yard will launch a separate accelerator program dedicated to digital health in nearby Spartanburg. A great deal of medical innovation is happening in Spartanburg, and local community members and business wanted to support a startup network that stimulates the work of larger corporations and gives young, hungry, smart, and interested entrepreneurs the opportunity to delve into the world of digital health, which is becoming increasingly significant in the wake of health care reform.

Rather than taking the notion of “if you build it, they will come,” The Iron Yard is bringing a town together to build a sustainable local economy. It is not trying to create the Next Silicon Valley or take on Y Combinator. Rather, its focus is on Greenville and giving residents of all ages the opportunity to give back to their community, create a successful career, and contribute to the digital world.

Hackers stole credit card information and potentially tax information from 3.6 million people in South Carolina. They obtained the data by hacking into the state’s Department of Revenue — a hole which the DOR says it has patched up.

The Department of Revenue first heard about the hack on October 10, when it was contacted by the state’s IT division. The department then asked security company Mandian to help it discover the point of entry and any other information about the hackers. On October 16, the department discovered that attempts to breach its systems were made in August and September.

If you’re a South Carolina resident and you’ve filed a tax return after 1998 (or if you filed a South Carolina tax return out of state), the Department of Revenue says you should call (866) 578-5422, where a representative can tell you if your information has been stolen. It also recommends people go to protectmyid.com/scdor, though the website currently redirects you to a generic sign-in page.

South Carolina promises to provide anyone whose information has been stolen with one year of identity theft protection, along with credit monitoring, all through Experian.

“The number of records breached requires an unprecedented, large-scale response by the Department of Revenue, the State of South Carolina, and all our citizens,” said South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in a statement. “We are taking immediate steps to protect the taxpayers of South Carolina, including providing one year of credit monitoring and identity protection to those affected.”

hat tip Associated Press; South Carolina image via Shutterstock

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich may be duking it out tonight in Florida’s high-stakes Republican primary, but when it comes to attracting online traffic from Floridians, Romney is the clear winner, according to Experian Hitwise.

Strong Internet buzz doesn’t translate to a proportionately high number of votes, as demonstrated by Ron Paul in the recent Iowa caucuses. Social media predictors had Ron Paul highly favored to take the Iowa caucus, but he trailed behind Rick Santorum and Romney at the end of voting. But perhaps online traffic trends could be a better indicator, if we look closer at data and trending patterns.

Unlike social media channels, which are often hard to analyze, online traffic might actually be a better indicator overall because it shows a level of interest in a candidate and voters’ willingness to learn more about them. Experian Hitwise spokesperson Matt Tatham took the time to give us traffic numbers related to the last few primary contests, and some data points make a fairly compelling argument for traffic translating to votes.

For four weeks leading up to Jan. 10′s New Hampshire primary, Romney was easily ahead of all competitors in attracting New-Hampshire-specific traffic. Romney easily won that contest with 97,532 votes, or 39.3 percent. Ron Paul grabbed 22.9 percent of the vote and Jon Hutsman got 16.9 percent.

South Carolina is another story. Romney attracted more traffic to his site from South Carolina voters than all of his competitors, but he still lost to Gingrich by a 13-point margin. Tatham said there is an interesting data point, though, that correlates with Gingrich’s surprise win. During the last week before South Carolina voting, Romney’s traffic fell considerably lower and Gingrich’s traffic surged.

Now we have tonight’s Florida primary. During the past four weeks, Romney’s campaign site has received the majority of visits from Florida, while Gingrich is leading in site traffic for the entire U.S. Gingrich was garnering more traffic from Florida citizens through Jan. 14, but since that time, Romney’s numbers have come up considerably and Gingrich’s have gone down.

“Getting the most online traffic can mean quite a few things,” Tatham said. “In the case of Florida, perhaps voters feel like they already know enough about Gingrich or maybe they heard a quote from Romney and wanted to find out more about him.”

With tonight’s highly contentious primary in Florida, we will be able to test these numbers once again. And if Romney does prevail, as he is predicted to, it will be another indicator that online traffic and interest can in fact help predict voting patterns.

“A lot was made of Obama’s deft use of the Internet and social media,” Tatham said. “This year, it will be amplified even more.”

Mitt Romney photo: nmfbihop/Flickr