At TRANSFORM HF, we champion research that advances heart failure care and prevention—prioritizing translational potential, patient-centered design, and health equity.
One of the key ways we foster innovation and build connections is through our Collaboration Starter Grants. Designed to spark new partnerships, these grants provide crucial early-stage funding for research and project proposals. This support can include preliminary research and data collection, proposal development, and compensation for patient partners and Knowledge Keepers.
Each year, we invite members of our network to apply, and many of the collaborations that emerge are sparked or strengthened through TRANSFORM HF events and programs.
We’re thrilled to announce the Collaboration Starter Grant recipients for 2025:
- Dr. Nadine Akbar (Research Chair in Community Connection, Humber River Health)
- Bradley Hallett (PhD Candidate, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto)
- Dr. Saiful Hoque (Postdoctoral Fellow, KITE Research Institute)
- Dr. Kristina Kokorelias (Associate Scientist, Sinai Health System)
- Dr. Zahra Shakeri (Assistant Professor, Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, University of Toronto)
- Ruilin Wu (PhD Candidate, Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto)
- Dr. Christopher Yu (Clinician, University Health Network)
Read on to learn more about their projects!
An environmental scan of digital solutions to support at-home self-management and prevention of hospitalizations among marginalized communities living with heart failure in Northwestern Toronto
Nadine Akbar, Syed (Najaf) Nadeem, Monica DaSilva, Krystle Luu, Nighina Noori, Fiorella Bruno
Humber River Health (HRH) is a community-based hospital serving the diverse Northwestern Toronto region. As an academic researcher affiliated with the University of Toronto and HRH, Dr. Nadine Akbar is looking to support at-home monitoring of the region’s heart failure patients to prevent future hospitalizations.
Together with her team, Dr. Akbar will use this Collaboration Starter Grant to work with HRH’s brand-new Heart Failure Clinic in the identification of the most appropriate remote monitoring tool for the communities served by the hospital. This project will involve environmental scans, focus groups, and preparation for a pilot study of the selected tool – all under the guidance of an advisory group composed of people with lived experience, clinicians, and researchers.
TRANSFORM HF is excited to engage with Dr. Akbar, her team, and HRH to support patients in their self-management through digital tools.
The region of Northwestern Toronto consists largely of marginalized communities that face many barriers to accessing care. This project will serve as the first step towards providing our community with the technology that they need, and integrating it fully with our digital hospital to prevent unnecessary emergency department visits and future hospitalizations.
Public Housing and Paediatric Cardiac Arrest Study
Bradley Hallett, Tim Chan, Sofie Kjærholm, Carolina Malta Hansen
Led by Bradley Hallett and in collaboration with Copenhagen University Hospital and the University of Copenhagen, this project seeks to investigate the disparities in the incidence, response, and outcomes of pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in public housing areas compared to other residential areas.
Public housing areas have been identified as high-risk zones, with significantly higher incidence rates of cardiac arrest and lower survival rates due to socioeconomic, demographic, and environmental factors. Using an interdisciplinary approach and leveraging international databases, Hallett and his team will gain a deeper understanding of local trends in cardiac arrest incidence, access to emergency medical services, and the role of community-driven response strategies in the context of the social determinants of health that influence outcomes in these communities. The findings of this project will inform best practices for improving pre-hospital care and bystander intervention rates in public housing areas.
TRANSFORM HF recognizes the potential of this project to advance equitable, decentralized, and community-oriented care models.
By leveraging interdisciplinary collaboration to design targeted interventions through this project grant, we hope to inform scalable interventions that will improve survival rates and reduce disparities in health outcomes, especially for underserved pediatric populations.
– Bradley Hallett
Development of Smart Textile Solution for Monitoring Cardiovascular Health in this Era of Changing Climate
Saiful Hoque, Baptise Garnier, Azadeh Yadollahi, Vladan Koncar, Susan Marzolini, Sophia Yue Li, Marisol Campos-Navarette, Rene Adams
This Toronto-France collaboration led by Dr. Saiful Hoque seeks to develop ‘smart garments’ capable of monitoring heart function and controlling body temperature – a novel and important feature in the face of climate change.
Exposure to extreme temperatures can exacerbate cardiovascular health problems. The high prevalence of cardiovascular conditions and vulnerability to environmental temperature is even more pronounced in those living with low socio-economic status or unstable housing. This project aims to gain a physiological understanding of how room temperature affects cardiovascular health and to develop smart garments (e.g. socks and chest band) to sense and change temperature, respectively to improve cardiovascular health outcomes in older adults with chronic conditions. With support from TRANSFORM HF, Dr. Hoque’s team will develop a garment prototype informed by community focus groups.
This work at the intersection of digital health and health equity has real potential to move the needle on user-centered care while providing adaptations for changing environmental conditions.
We are thrilled to launch this project, which will drive health equity by ensuring individuals in low-resource settings benefit from innovations that enhance their well-being, regardless of socio-economic barriers. Our smart textile solution, built with community-driven insights, will make personalized, proactive healthcare more accessible to those who need it most.
– Dr. Hoque
Advancing Heart Failure Research: A Collaborative Quantitative Meta-Analysis and Consultative Exercise
Kristina Kokorelias, Peter Hoang, Maurita Haris, Deal Valentine
Sinai Health Systems and Wilfrid Laurier University are coming together under the leadership of Dr. Kristina Kokorelias to explore the gap in heart failure care among older adults experiencing homelessness. Specifically, with the support of a Collaboration Strater Grant, they hope to better understand how to integrate models of care and digital health solutions that can reduce health inequities.
While it is known that older adults who experience homelessness have a higher frequency and earlier presentation of age-related comorbidities, the degree and severity of heart failure and coronary artery disease (CAD) has not been systematically reviewed in this population. Dr. Kokorelias’ team will conduct a systematic review to elucidate the prevalence and incidence of heart failure and CAD, and the risk compared to housed individuals. They will then engage with people with lived experience and experts to review their findings, develop a collaborative network, and develop a subsequent research proposal to continue advancing this work.
TRANSFORM HF is excited to see what will come next from this collaboration!
Our partnership brings together leading experts from across multiple institutions and disciplines to tackle inequities in heart failure care. By combining real-world clinical insights with digital innovation, we aim to propose inclusive solutions that ensure every patient—regardless of background or circumstance—has access to digital innovation in heart failure care, ensuring no patient is left behind.
– Dr. Kokorelias
Harnessing Patient Feedback to Enhance Health System Planning and Advance Heart Failure Care
Zahra Shakeri, Dione Aleman, Emily Seto, AmirHosein Rostami
Did you know that patient satisfaction has been directly correlated with improved health outcomes? Dr. Shakeri and her team does! Their project aims to advance the collection and analysis of patient experience data to support clinic and system-level improvements in heart failure care.
With the support of a Collaboration Starter Grant, the team will conduct a scoping review on the use of patient experience data to improve heart failure care, perform an exploratory analysis of retrospective experience data from 45 Ontario hospitals using Natural Language Processing, and nurture collaborations for future initiatives aimed at leveraging patient experience data for healthcare improvement. Dr. Shakeri is hopeful that their work can help improve system approaches to service delivery and identify barriers to equitable and effective care.
TRANSFORM HF sees great value in this project’s approach to leveraging data to foster more equitable care and improve outcomes for all.
Our new collaboration will explore ways to make the most of existing data sources, such as patient feedback comments and survey responses, while developing new approaches to extract meaningful and actionable insights. Our efforts will be centered on facilitating a better understanding of patient care journeys, with the goal of improving care coordination and helping healthcare systems respond more effectively to the needs of patients living with heart failure.
– Dr. Shakeri
Digitalization of Smoking Cessation Programs for Cardiovascular Patient Care – Designing A Mobile App Companion for Automated and Personalized Strategies to Achieve Sustainable Smoking Cessation
Panorama Health (Ruilin Wu, Kathryn Howe, Tenzin Yangzom, Sophie Sigfstead, Nathaniel Holwell) and Adim De
The Panorama Health team has joined forces with the Ottawa Model for Smoking Cessation (OMSC) team at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute to design an automated and personalized tool for smoking cessation!
Cigarette smoking is the second strongest risk factor for heart failure. While smoking cessation is beneficial for patients, support programs within our healthcare system remain generic, reactive, resource-intensive, and episodic. The Panorama Health team’s Sofee app aims to overcome these barriers by integrating with users’ wearable devices and automatically capturing smoking events. This grant will support the team in their new work with OMSC on user engagement and product development.
TRANSFORM HF recognizes the inherent challenges in delivering successful smoking cessation programs, as well as their massive potential benefits to patients and our healthcare system.
With TRANSFORM HF’s funding, Panorama Health can now realize our goal to digitize current smoking cessation programs to enable remote and equitable access to personalized and sustainable smoking/vaping cessation support, which ultimately improves in-hospital care and surgical outcomes for cardiovascular patients.
– Panorama Health
The feasibility of a cardiovascular point of care ultrasound education program combined with artificial Intelligence to improve the detection of heart failure in the Northern Ontario
Christopher Yu, Mali Worme, Yas Moayedi, Norissa Haynes, Katherine Turner, Amer Johri
Drawing from remote capacity building efforts in Haiti, Dr. Christopher Yu and his team are assessing the feasibility of deploying an AI-guided point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) education program in the James and Hudson Bay Region.
Early and accurate detection of heart failure is critical to improving outcomes, yet barriers such as geographic isolation, a shortage of healthcare professionals, and limited diagnostic infrastructure can negatively impact outcomes for those living in remote areas, such as in the James and Hudson Bay Region. Dr. Yu and his team believe point-of-care cardiac ultrasound (POCUS), a diagnostic tool, can provide a potential solution. Working together with partners from Weeneebayko Area Health Authority, Yale University, and Queen’s University, the UHN-led team proposes to support regional capacity through hands-on training of the POCUS system, device provision, and collaborative diagnosis.
TRANSFORM HF is very excited by the potential of this work to support early detection of heart failure and improve outcomes in the communities in the James and Hudson Bay region.
Recent technology advances mean ultrasound machines are now the size of a tablet; combined with AI software, these devices can help guide users to take optimal heart images. This grant will fund initial pilot study work to assess the feasibility of improving access to heart ultrasounds using this technology in the James and Hudson Bay region surgical outcomes for cardiovascular patients.
– Dr. Yu
Keep up with our recipients’ journeys by following TRANSFORM HF on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
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