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.
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.
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.
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.
Watch four teams from our inaugural 2023 ECHO Discovery cohort pitch their novel innovative cardiovascular health solutions to judges Craig Simmons, Darshan Brahmbhatt, Julie Vizza, and Sumaiyah Rehman for a chance to win $500!
While the judges deliberate, hear from global leader in digital health technology, Jacqueline Shreibati. Dr. Shreibati discusses how she pivoted her trajectory and leveraged her diverse skillset to make real-world impact – inspirational words on the importance of finding your value, being persistent, and navigating rejection!
Drumroll please… Panorama Health (Kathryn Howe, Tenzin Yangzom, Sophie Sigfstead, Ruilin Wu, Nathan Holwell) was awarded $500 for a conversational AI app for smoking cessation! Congrats to Cardio Fi (Anat Usatinsky, Samantha Unger, John Darwin Namata, Vaswani Kumar Lukka, Tina Sokhanvar), Podiascale (Mohammed Rashidul Anwar, Rayhaan Bassawon, Jonathun Wu), and PressurePal (Daniel Davoudpour, Elizabeth Karvasarki, Amanda Mac, Megh Rathod) on their strong pitches as well.
In December 2022, Dr. Heather Ross and Dr. Joseph Cafazzo were named University Health Network’s Inventors of the Year in recognition of their development and commercialization of Medly– a remote heart failure care tool powered by software and AI. As part of #ECHODiscovery’s Fireside Chat speaker series, Heather and Joe joined us to talk all things Medly – from what’s required for a successful collaboration to what’s in store for the future of Medly Therapeutics as it spreads, scales, and integrates new features.
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.
Join Drs. Ross and Cafazzo to learn more about Medly, the ingredients to a successful collaboration, and what’s expected for the future of Medly Therapeutics as it spreads, scales, and integrates new features.
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.
