Event to help start-ups break into health market

KITCHENER, Ont. – Communitech, a technology accelerator spun-off from the University of Waterloo – is preparing for an event in mid-September that is all about helping Canadian med-tech startups break into the lucrative Canadian healthcare market.

The buyers of new healthcare technology will listen to pitches from the selected startups – Cauchy Analytics, AIMA Laboratories, Foqus Technologies, Hyivy Health, Llif Healthcare, PragmaClin Research, Rocket Doctor, Topology Health, VeroSource Solutions and Key Metrix.

During the next month the startups will work with growth coaches and advisers with deep expertise in a startup’s area, said Stacy Sobering, manager of the Communitech program called Fast Track Health.

The program was created to help startups break into the Canadian healthcare market, which can be difficult. In the past many Canadian med-tech startups landed their first big customers in the U.S., and later moved south.

The September pitch meeting includes representatives from the CAN Health Network, which links innovators and healthcare institutions looking for new technology; the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization, which helps startups scale, commercialize new technology and obtain early investments; and Mohawk Medbuy, a national organization that buys new tech for more than 100 hospitals.

One of the companies that will be pitching, Cauchy Analytics, has produced an innovative scanner that can save lives when patients deteriorate in hospital. When a patient crashes in intensive care, it can take more than an hour for doctors to get clear images of the heart.

Doctors can quickly see a patient’s blood oxygen level, heart rate, brain waves and blood pressure but they do not have a clear picture of what’s going on inside the patient’s heart even as the patient rapidly deteriorates, said James Lowman (pictured), the CEO and co-founder of the med-tech startup Cauchy Analytics.

“We built a miniaturized and automated ultrasound sensor that can be left on the patient indefinitely,” said Lowman, a computational fluid dynamics expert with a background in coding, electronics and hardware.

With a quick look at the sensor, a nurse can see if there is anything wrong with the patient’s heart. Traditionally, an ultrasound technician brought a machine to the patient’s bed, and needed about 40 minutes to obtain the images. A cardiologist then has to review and confirm the findings.

All that goes on while the ICU team scrambles to help a crashing patient. Getting images of the heart right away can mean the difference between life and death.

“If a patient crashes, everyone is running around trying to stabilize them; there is a point in time when they don’t know if it is a cardiac issue,” said Lowman.

Cauchy Analytics was founded by Lowman, who has a PhD in computational fluid dynamics from the University of Waterloo, Dr. Rakshit Shetty, an emergency-room doctor, and Moslem SadeghiGoughari, who has a PhD in ultrasound engineering from UW. Cauchy Analytics is in the UW startup support program Velocity.

Source: Waterloo Record