TRANSFORM HF’s 2024 Trainee Award Recipients
TRANSFORM HF is pleased to announce the recipients of their 2024 Trainee Awards! Learn more about the heart failure trainees and their projects.
Animation on Cree Community Heart Health Accepted to Toronto Shorts
Set in the communities of Moosonee and Moose Factory, “Strengthening our Hearts through a River of Possibilities,” highlights key themes from community members’ stories about managing their heart health.
Catalyzing Collaboration at the Intersection of Data Science & Biomedical Engineering
Data scientist Chris McIntosh and biomedical engineer Dan Franklin first met at a TRANSFORM HF networking event. Now they’re working together with their trainees Will Gao and Matthew Kenyon Lee to develop advanced wearable devices that use AI to produce cleaner data for more reliable insights into heart function.
Collaborating for Equity: 2024 Collaboration Starter Grant Recipients
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.
Visual Communications Award for Pediatric-to-Adult Care Transition Support
Congratulations to Beatrice Nai-Jung Chen, a second-year student in the Master of Science in Biomedical Communications at the University of Toronto, for receiving a Vesalius Trust Research Grant! The Vesalius Trust provides grant funding to students enrolled in...
Working Across Provinces & Disciplines to Address the Ultimate Heart Failure
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.
Sahr Wali is Bridging Worldviews to Transform Care
TRANSFORM HF researcher Dr. Sahr Wali (Scientific Associate, Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research) has received a CIHR Health System Impact Embedded Early Career (ECR) Researcher Award. Sahr is one of only 12 awardees across Canada.
Sahr will be working in partnership with rural and urban community organizations to develop a care pathway that provides community-first cardiac care services.
Working with Weeneebayko Area Health Authority to Transform Care
It took Gloria Stoney five days to get medivaced from her home in Peawanuck to Toronto General Hospital this October when she started experiencing serious cardiac symptoms. She returned home at the end of November.
A new 5-year agreement with Weeneebayko Area Health Authority will support the cardiovascular needs of James and Hudson Bay communities with a focus on direct care and remote management, so that patients like Gloria can access high-quality care close to home.
New study: Simplifying the pediatric cardiac care journey through digital innovation
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.
Is it Time for an Entrepreneurship Vibe Check?
Megh Rathod is a PhD Candidate in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. He’s passionate about advancing medicine and quality of care through device innovation, and is currently working on developing a skin-tone invariant pulse oximeter in the form of a wearable.
Megh wanted to explore career paths and test his perceptions of entrepreneurship, so he applied to ECHO Discovery – a foundational education program that explores ideation, research translation, and entrepreneurship for cardiovascular health. Here’s what Megh had to say about his experience…
