Health Innovation Roundup

The Health Innovation Roundup, sponsored by Health Cities, is written and published weekly by Taproot Edmonton to bring you the latest news and events in research, technology, companies and people changing health for the better in Edmonton.

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Here are some highlights from this week’s Health Innovation Roundup:

Headlines

• • • • True Angle Medical won the right to attend Plug and Play’s 2022 summit in Silicon Valley after winning the People’s Choice Award in the health stream at Plug and Play Alberta‘s first Expo Day. Hear more about the medical device company from CEO Jana Rieger on Episode 107 of Amplify Your Business.
      • Entos Pharmaceuticals is opening a 9,600-square-foot research and development facility in San Diego in collaboration with sister companies Oisín Biotechnologies, OncoSenX, and Aegis Life. The facility complements the company’s Canadian headquarters in Edmonton and new offices in London, UK. “This is a significant milestone for Entos as we continue developing genetic medicines for some of our most challenging diseases,” CEO John Lewis said in a release.
      • The University of Alberta, University of Calgary, and University of Lethbridge have received $23 million from the province for the development of a partnership called Quantum City to advance quantum technologies. This technology has the potential to impact many sectors, including health, writes Folio.
      • Two major international emergent-tech conferences — COMSWORLD and NanoCanada’s International Conference — will be held in Edmonton in 2023. The announcement was made at NanoCanada’s From Earth to Space conference at the Edmonton Convention Centre last week.
      • Dr. Jason Tay is leading the pilot for a one-of-a-kind at-home cancer treatment program that allows patients to give themselves a chemotherapy treatment. The pilot is being funded by the Alberta Cancer Foundation and is being conducted with patients from the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton and the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary. “My ultimate hope — the win-win situation — is that our administrative system in the cancer centre finds this of value to the system and the patients, and they will allow us to do this routinely for patients who are willing and wanting,” Tay told CBC.
      • Edmonton has the only ambulance in Canada equipped to treat strokes. The ambulance treats patients in a 250-kilometre catchment area from the University of Alberta Hospital and has a crew of five that specializes in strokes as well as a CT scan that sends images back to a neurologist for assessment. It started as a pilot funded by the University Hospital Foundation and it is now sustained by Alberta Health Services.
      • The Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital celebrated 20 years of offering voice and communication training for trans and gender-diverse people through its Voice and Resonance Program. The program used to get five or six referrals a year, but now gets about that many every month.
      • The team at the University of Alberta’s BLINC Lab is one of only two in Canada giving amputees that have had difficulty with traditional prosthetics the chance to walk again through the Alberta Limb Osseointegration Program. “There’s this segment of people who just no matter how hard they try and no matter how hard the clinicians try and help them, just can’t get them comfortable,” BLINC director Jacqueline Hebert told CTV News. “And they can’t walk, and they can’t get back to work, and they can’t get back to doing their activities.”
      • Engineering grad Portia Rayner spoke to Folio about her interest in “soft robotics”, which uses pliable materials such as silicone in prosthetics. She learned to experiment through programs like The Pod and Neuro Nexus, and started her own mentoring event called the Ada Code Challenge.
      • Medical resident Yusef Yousuf spoke to Folio about pursuing family medicine to offer better care for racialized communities and make health care more equitable. “I witnessed first-hand a lot of the health disparities in terms of access and language and cultural barriers when immigrant populations are dealing with medicine,” he said. “My motivation to go into family medicine was really to be an advocate for these patients.” He co-founded the Black Medical Students’ Association in 2019.
      • Occupational therapy grad Juanita Gnanapragasam spoke to Folio about the opportunities she created during her degree to “build a community where everyone can thrive,” from co-organizing cooking-based projects to leading the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine’s LEGO League. She is now working as an occupational therapist at a mental health community program. “I love how the diversity of my experiences has allowed me to see people beyond their diagnoses, to see people for who they really are beyond their interactions with the health system,” she said.
      • BladeFlex, which makes a posture-training device, is among the Edmonton finalists for the Startup TNT Summit V finale. The finale will see six Edmonton startups, five from Calgary and five from Saskatchewan vie for a share of what Startup TNT hopes will be more than $1.5 million in investment.
      • Revée Agyepong, who was one of the first adults in Western Canada to receive a stem cell transplant to cure sickle cell disease, has written a book called My Sickled Cells. She’ll be signing books at a Black Owned Market event at Kingsway Mall on June 18.
      • At the 4th Symposium of the Canadian Society for Virology, Prof. David Evans of the University of Alberta co-presented data from research he is doing with Tonix Pharmaceuticals on a potential monkeypox vaccine, the New Jersey-based company said in a release. Alberta had four confirmed cases of monkeypox as of June 9, and cases have been recorded worldwide.

Events

• June 16, 7:30pm: Finding Your Why – Facing the Great Re-Evaluation, presented by Emerging Health Leaders Edmonton
• June 16, 18, and 19: Shining a Light for the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital
• June 20-21: Alberta Transplant Institute Research Day
• June 22, 12pm: Alberta Transplant Institute Seminar Series: Dr. James Shapiro, Dr. Patrick MacDonald, Kathleen Gibson
• June 23: Startup TNT Investment Summit V
• June 28, 10am: Validating Your Health Tech, presented by Health Cities

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