Nurse’s insight sparks Canadian patient safety innovation with HALO

TORONTO – What began from a single moment of inspiration in the pre-lung transplant ward at University Health Network (UHN) has blossomed into a nation-wide healthcare innovation. H.A.L.O Tele-Monitoring Inc. (“HALO”), a remote patient observation technology, has grown to serve 24 hospitals and six long-term care facilities across Canada, with the company committed to expanding further within its home country of Canada.

The inception of HALO dates back to 2015 when Marijana Zubrinic, a nurse practitioner at UHN’s Toronto General Hospital, encountered a difficult challenge while caring for an at-risk patient. The patient was exhibiting behaviors that were putting their safety at serious risk.

Traditional interventions weren’t effective and securing a constant care observer was not possible at that moment.

Recognizing the pressing need for a practical solution, Marijana led the development of an audio-visual monitoring device in collaboration with UHN’s Techna engineering team and subsequently piloted its use in patient’s room.

The device streamed a live feed to a central location, enabling trained technicians to monitor the patient around the clock.

This successful experiment marked the foundational step toward creating HALO, a novel approach to remote patient observation that has since grown into a fully operational spin-out company incubated at UHN.

“We call him Patient #1 and he continues to inspire us every single day at HALO,” reflects Marijana, who now serves as HALO’s chief operating officer and chief nursing executive. “From that very first moment, Patient #1 believed in the concept. He said hospitals might argue they can’t afford such technology, but patients will love it, and nurses will recognize its value. He encouraged me to make a promise – that I wouldn’t stop until every hospital in Canada had access to the solution. It’s a promise I’ve carried with me since 2016, and I haven’t stopped working on HALO telemonitoring since.”

Fast forward to today and HALO is changing the patient observation landscape in Canada. The HALO device, stationed at the patient’s bedside, securely streams a live audio-video feed of a patient to HALO’s observation centre.

There, a trained patient observation technician continuously monitors up to 12 patients at once which enables HALO to offer hospitals a more cost-effective method to observe at-risk patients without compromising quality of care or patient safety.

From its headquarters in downtown Toronto, HALO directly employs 27 patient observation technicians who provide its telemonitoring service on a 24/7/365 basis.

Each technician is trained by practicing clinicians to intervene in real-time to prevent adverse events. This type of proactive support complements on-site care teams and enables them to focus on their core clinical duties.

Nationwide impact and proven value: HALO has been deployed across UHN, including 50 inpatient units, where it has supported more efficient patient monitoring and reduced reliance on costly, temporary staffing solutions. In 2022 alone, UHN reduced its staffing agency spend by $2.5 million by using HALO.

Beyond cost savings, HALO directly addresses workforce challenges by easing the burden on nurses and clinical teams. In units using HALO, staff report greater confidence knowing their patients are under continuous observation by trained technicians.

As it relates to patient safety, at one hospital in Western Canada, HALO contributed to a 75 percent reduction in high-risk patient falls within the first year of use – demonstrating the meaningful impact virtual observation can have on patient outcomes.

HALO continues to scale as hospitals and health systems across Canada seek innovative strategies to support their teams. The platform’s centralized observation model frees up bedside staff to focus on direct, high-value care, advancing key system priorities such as digital transformation, patient safety, and sustainable staffing.

A recent milestone includes HALO’s province-wide rollout across Newfoundland and Labrador, where it now supports 11 hospitals and six long-term care homes.

HALO’s deployment has proven particularly valuable in rural and remote communities, such as those in Newfoundland and Labrador, where staffing geographic and resource challenges can make continuous in person observation more complex. In these settings, HALO complements on-site care teams by enhancing patient safety and enabling more flexible use of existing staff resources.

Designed for the Canadian healthcare system: The mentorship between Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, a world-renowned lung transplant surgeon and chief of innovation at UHN, and Marijana, a nurse practitioner, played a critical role in HALO’s creation.

“Dr. Keshavjee encouraged me to pursue HALO when it was still just an idea and supported its evolution every step of the way,” says Marijana. “That clinician-to-clinician mentorship shaped not just the technology – but how we built it, how we validated it, and who we built it for.”

During early development, the HALO team reviewed several U.S.-based technologies for virtual observation. However, they found that most solutions were poorly suited to the Canadian environment – designed for different staffing models, incompatible cost structures, and often reliant on the hospital to hire and manage their own observation staff.

Recognizing this gap, HALO was purpose-built for Canada’s single provincial payor healthcare system.

“HALO was thoughtfully designed by clinicians to be, first and foremost, easy to use. The setup is simple, clinicians using the device require minimal training, and it integrates seamlessly into established clinical workflows and protocols,” said Dr. Keshavjee, co-founder and chief medical officer at HALO.

“At HALO, every decision we make places safety and the patient at the centre of our work. Our unwavering commitment is to deliver exceptional care to the patients we monitor.”

The leadership team at HALO is composed of experienced clinicians and medtech professionals, including Marijana Zubrinic and Dr. Keshavjee, alongside Sumeet Thind (president), Rick Mangat (executive director), and Thomas Wellner (chairman of the board).

HALO operates its state-of-the-art, 24/7/365 remote patient observation centre from the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto.