Situated within Canada’s largest hospital network, the Digital Hub facilitates access to cutting edge resources, world class expertise, and diverse patient populations. We understand the unique needs of patients, clinicians, and the healthcare system – and what’s required for your innovation to succeed.
Our Collaboration Starter Grants support members of our community working together by funding the initial activities of collaborative projects that align with the TRANSFORM HF mission. We are pleased to announce the recipients of our 2024 Collaboration Starter Grants.
TRANSFORM HF is pleased to present a 2024 Seed Grant to Drs. Dainty, Grunau, and their team for their proposal to build the first ever sensor to detect cardiac arrest – the ultimate heart failure.
Whether a cardiac arrest is witnessed or not is a key determinant of outcomes. Unfortunately, in over three-quarters of out-of-hospital events, no one is there to witness the event. In many cases, minutes, hours, or days pass before the emergency is recognized.
According to Drs. Katie Dainty and Brian Grunau, immediate recognition of sudden cardiac arrests could triple survival rates, saving more than 3,400 lives per year. They believe that this can be done through remote monitoring.
A team of researchers led by TRANSFORM HF’s Dr. Sahr Wali are exploring how digital tools can support pediatric cardiac care management.
Their study began by exploring clinicians’ views on the use of a digital therapeutic program to support pediatric cardiac care. Through semi-structured interviews with clinicians at SickKids, the team identified key themes to guide the development of a digital therapeutic intervention to empower adolescents with heart disease in their own care. These findings have been published in PLOS Digital Health.
Isaac Chang and his team are developing a digital health technology called Smart Tile that can monitor a patient’s heart function while they sleep and alert clinicians, caregivers, and patients of any adverse events. Innovations like this are key for empowering people living with heart failure to manage their own care and stay out of hospital.
Our Collaboration Starter Grants support members of our community working together by funding the initial activities of collaborative projects that align with the TRANSFORM HF mission. We are pleased to announce the recipients of our 2023 Collaboration Starter Grants.
When it comes to digital innovation, Alex Mariakakis and his team are all ears! Meet our 2023 Seed Grant recipient, who’s aiming to make blood pressure monitoring more accessible using earbuds.
Earbuds have the potential to remove the cost of blood pressure cuffs, increase the ease of at-home monitoring, and could even out-perform smartwatches! Alex views earbuds as one of the next big platforms – not just for blood pressure monitoring, but for digital health in general.
The Ontario healthcare system is under strain, still recovering from the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic. The University Health Network (UHN) and Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd. have partnered to address a critical need of heart failure patients.
The objective of the partnership is to expand patient reach of UHN’s successful Medly Program— an innovative, digital therapeutic solution that delivers the benefits of specialized clinical heart failure management at home while improving quality of life and reducing hospitalizations.