The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority recently awarded state funding to two high-tech companies - Louisville Bioscience, Inc. and Laboratory and BioDiagnostics, LLC - in order to create a combined 36 jobs with average salaries of more than $64,000 per year.

Laboratory and BioDiagnostics, or LabDx, will receive $250,000 in the form of a forgivable loan to help purchase equipment and outfit the company's laboratory. According to an article by Manufacturing & Technology eJournal, the company expects to create at least 18 full-time, high-tech and technical support jobs in Kentucky by the end of next year.

LabDx has stated that diagnostic medicine is one of the fastest growing sectors of the healthcare industry, with treatment models changing from cure-and-eradicate to diagnose-and-prevent.

LabDx is currently using technology that will allow lab results to be directly transferred from the company's new medical laboratory to customers' electronic medical records systems. Those services will be marketed to physicians and medical facilities to help eliminate errors while improving reporting speed.

Louisville Bioscience will receive $250,000 in the form of a forgivable loan to pay for patent protection expenses and purchase laboratory instruments and equipment. The company also was approved to receive $300,000 in tax incentives through the new Kentucky Investment Program. Louisville Bioscience expects to create at least 18 full-time, high-tech and technical support jobs by the end of 2012.

The company uses a proprietary lab technique to profile a patient's blood plasma proteins in order to detect autoimmune deficiencies, infectious diseases and early stage cancer. Louisville Bioscience has an exclusive license from the University of Louisville to two patent applications for the use of a specific blood test to help detect and monitor diseases.

Funding for both companies came from the Cabinet for Economic Development's High-Tech Investment Pool, which is meant to build and promote technology-based and research-intensive companies and projects.