Why Canada needs to accelerate AI adoption in healthcare diagnostics

Imagine finding a strange lesion on your leg. Typically, you’d book time to see your doctor, have some tests done, get a referral to a specialist, and then wait about seven months to secure an appointment. What if there was a better way?

Imagine if you could take a photo of your leg with your phone and send it to a physician. A few minutes later, that photo could be fed into an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that informs your physician of the severity of the lesion, which can then help them make the decision on whether to treat it with a simple topical cream or flag for immediate attention: no bloodwork, no wait times, no stress.

This scenario isn’t that far off from reality. Advances in AI-driven diagnostics are helping doctors make faster, more accurate decisions without requiring patients to undertake invasive procedures, wait for test results or even visit a clinic.

Canada is a powerhouse in AI and many of these smart diagnostic tools are being built here, such as Toronto’s Mimosa Diagnostics, which has developed a mobile health platform that uses near-infrared light and AI to monitor skin injuries.

Linda Lifetech is working on a contactless breast cancer detection tool that could help make more routine screening more accessible. And Retispec is harnessing AI to screen for early biomarkers of Alzheimer’s during routine eye exams.

Tools such as these can help Canada’s overtaxed healthcare system by triaging cases based on the need for care or offloading to other providers like pharmacists, which frees up valuable physician time and provides relevant clinical decision support.

The impact of these solutions could be significant: If AI tools were used at scale in healthcare, Canada could save as much as $26 billion each year – nearly 10 percent of its yearly spend.

However, while Canada is a leader in AI development, the country lags behind in the adoption of the technology at the organizational level. Report after report underscores the need for Canadian businesses to accelerate their AI adoption strategies if they want to remain competitive on the global stage.

To realize the potential of these game-changing diagnostic tools, our health-tech entrepreneurs need much more support. “In Canada, we currently lack sufficient funding programs to support early-stage prototype development and clinical validation,” said Saumik Biswas, CEO and co-founder of Tenomix.

A lack of funding, resources and physician availability is not slowing down progress for Biswas’s London, Ont.-based medtech company, which is streamlining colon cancer scanning using AI. Its bench-top device, which radically speeds up the search for cancerous lymph nodes in biopsy samples, is undergoing clinical engagements and usability testing has the potential to reduce wait-times and improve accuracy for colorectal cancer diagnosis.

But there needs to be funding with milestone-based checkpoints that enable innovative medtech companies to engage with hospitals throughout the entire product development lifecycle, Biswas said. “This is especially crucial for startups in the early minimum viable product stages,” he added. “Insights from clinical partners – on the economics of the clinical problem, usability and workflow integration – can save significant time and resources in the long run while ensuring that the solutions being developed address real-world clinical needs.”

That close-knit collaboration between medtech startups and physicians is starting to take shape in places like the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub in Halifax. Its researchers work on more than 1,400 research projects annually with 17,500 participants and collaborate with clinicians and staff to identify solutions and help validate homegrown ideas.

A focus on delivering virtual care across the province has led to a partnership with Virtual Hallway that connects primary care providers with specialists to seek advice on patient care.

Meanwhile, hospitals are embracing AI with some even creating their own in-house AI teams to develop customized tools aimed at improving internal systems and protocols. Unity Health Toronto was the first in Canada to do so and has launched more than 50 AI tools into regular practice across its healthcare network.

Indeed, it’s a start, but AI-focused startups also need access to capital, and we have yet to see investment happening at a scale that could significantly move the needle.

Last June, Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund committed to spending $10.7 million to help fund research and development work for seven medtech companies, including Mimosa Diagnostics. That funding will help Mimosa continue its commercialization plans, both here and in the U.S., while also working to develop its technology for other health issues its mobile platform can help monitor.

Meanwhile, Tenomix closed a funding round earlier this year that raised $2 million from several investors including the Ontario Centre for Innovation (OCI).

While these are good investments from federal and provincial policy-makers, it’s still a drop in the bucket of what most early-stage medtech startups require to get their novel technologies into hospitals and in front of physicians, especially considering Canada spends about $200 billion in total healthcare spending each year.

The quicker AI is embraced in healthcare, the sooner we can start saving lives, reducing unnecessary strain on our doctors and nurses, and building a system that can work better for everyone. Canada has the talent and the means to lead this AI revolution. Let’s work together and make it happen.

Louise Pichette, senior manager of health sciences at MaRS Discovery District, works with local and international communities to help the most promising Canadian biotech and medtech startups achieve their greatest potential.