The modern layer — health software, geothermal, and water

1995 – TODAY

The honest frame: Outside the defense plants, Fort Wayne's post-2000 technology layer is not a software cluster and this record does not dress it as one. The city's great internet-era win was a retailer, Sweetwater, whose story sits in the Dot-Com Winners section; its industrial technology scale sits in firms the Business record profiles, among them Steel Dynamics and Fort Wayne Metals. What the modern layer holds in its own right is a small set of genuine producers, each documented, and they are printed at their true size.

Medical Informatics Engineering — the health-IT pioneer: The strongest homegrown software story is in medicine. Medical Informatics Engineering was formed in Fort Wayne in 1995 by Doug Horner to move medical information securely, and launched the MedWeb, one of the nation's first health information exchanges; in 1998 it introduced WebChart, a browser-based electronic health record among the first of its kind for ambulatory practice, the BioCrossroads history of Indiana health IT records. By the mid-2000s more than 85 percent of physicians in northeast Indiana subscribed to the MedWeb, a contemporary case study records. The company's modern platform, Enterprise Health, carries the occupational-health records of corporations, health systems, universities and government agencies, and in April 2024 MIE took a growth investment from Serent Capital — a firm of well under two hundred people by directory counts, and the deepest software lineage the city has produced.

WaterFurnace — geothermal from Conservation Way: WaterFurnace International was founded in Fort Wayne in 1983, began as a distributor, bought a water-source heat-pump line and moved its assembly to Fort Wayne to manufacture its first product, and in 1991 built its 110,000-square-foot headquarters and plant at 9000 Conservation Way — heated and cooled, then as now, by its own geothermal systems. The company's history claims the first variable-capacity geothermal heat pump offered to homeowners; the claim is printed as the company's. Sweden's NIBE acquired WaterFurnace in 2014, and it serves as NIBE's North American energy headquarters; on 24 September 2025 it opened a $14 million, 173,000-square-foot expansion that brought the headquarters to some 295,000 square feet.

Franklin Electric — the water-systems house: The city's other global technology headquarters moves water rather than data. Franklin Electric was founded in Bluffton in 1944 by E. J. Schaefer and T. W. Kehoe to make fractional-horsepower motors — GE's Fort Wayne trade, at one remove — and in 1950 introduced the first fully submersible electric pump motor, the product that made deep-well water systems practical; the motor itself is carried in Inventors & Inventions. Headquartered in Fort Wayne today, the company designs and supplies submersible motors, pumps, electronic drives and controls for groundwater, wastewater and fueling systems worldwide, employing some 5,600 people globally by its own European arm's count. Its scale is the modern layer's ceiling: a global systems company run from Fort Wayne, in a line that descends directly from the motor century this section opened with.

Sources:

1. BioCrossroads, From Dishwashers to Digital Medical Records: Indiana's Leadership in Health Information Technology — MIE founded 1995; the MedWeb created 1995; WebChart introduced 1998.
2. Medical Informatics Engineering / Serent Capital, Business Wire release, 23 April 2024 — the 1995 founding by Doug Horner; "one of the nation's first health information exchanges"; the Enterprise Health platform and its customers; the Serent growth investment.
3. Infortrend / MIE case study (c. 2005) — more than 85 percent of northeast Indiana physicians subscribing to the MedWeb.
4. WaterFurnace International — company history of innovation (the 1983 founding; the McQuay line purchase and first WS Series product; the 1991 Conservation Way plant; the variable-capacity claim) and the 29 September 2025 expansion release (the $14 million, 173,000-square-foot addition; the headquarters at 295,000 square feet); the 2014 NIBE acquisition.
5. Franklin Electric Co. — company record: founded 1944 in Bluffton by E. J. Schaefer and T. W. Kehoe; the first fully submersible electric motor, 1950; headquarters Fort Wayne; the European arm's count of 5,600 people globally.