Congratulations to the 2024 HHS DRIVE Spark winners
Three teams of innovators with connections to Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) received 2024 DRIVE Spark funding grants from the hospital to support original, new projects aimed at improving health-care delivery.
DRIVE – which stands for Dare, Research, Innovate, VenturE – cultivates the development of HHS research and innovation into medical technologies and solutions with the goal of transforming new ideas into real commercial solutions aimed at improving patient outcomes and advancing health care.
“After an extensive review by our DRIVE advisory board, we are proud to recognize three exemplary projects that have demonstrated exceptional promise,” said Dr. Marc Jeschke, vice president of research and chief scientific officer for HHS. Jeschke announced the DRIVE Spark winners in October, as part of HHS Research Awareness Month celebrations. The winning projects are SixthSense, Power of Play and Medloaner.
Each team was eligible for a grant of up to $50,000, to achieve critical milestones towards potential commercialization.
“HHS DRIVE is committed to providing the necessary resources to support your innovative projects,” Jeschke told recipients, who received their award at October’s HHS Research Social event. “I extend my sincere gratitude to all applicants. We look forward to the next round of SPARK funding and to nurturing the remarkable innovative potential within HHS.”
Measuring the “sixth vital sign” in older adults
Dr. Marc Jeschke (left) presents award to SixthSense team
Falls are a leading cause of injury among older adults, with an emergency room visit every 11 seconds and a death every 19 minutes in Canada. To help prevent falls, a team at the Geras Centre for Aging Research developed SixthSense, an innovative radar sensor that measures walking speed—the “sixth vital sign”—in less than six seconds. This quick and accurate tool helps health care providers identify fall risks early, allowing timely interventions to keep older adults safe and independent.
SixthSense founders include Dr. Alexandra Papaioannou, a geriatrician, professor of medicine, Tier 1 CIHR chair, and executive director of Geras; Dr. George Ioannidis, biostatistician, Eli Lilly chair, associate professor of medicine, and deputy director of Geras; and Dr. Patricia Hewston, occupational therapist, research associate at Geras, and assistant clinical professor of rehabilitation science. With support from Spark funding, the team is working to bring SixthSense into clinics soon to improve care for older adults. The Geras Centre for Aging is a research institute of HHS.
Coming to grips with a fun new test for kids
Dr. Marc Jeschke (left) presents award to Power of Play team
Power of Play is the brainchild of McMaster University engineering students Deena Al-Sammak and Rooaa Shanshal. Through interviews with occupational therapists and other health care professionals working with pediatric rehabilitation patients at HHS McMaster Children’s Hospital (MCH), Al-Sammak and Shanshal recognized an opportunity to improve pediatric physical therapy by developing a kid-friendly tool to measure grip strength, since there is a lack of such tools for young patients.
Existing grip strength tools used in most therapy clinics were developed for adults, and don’t work well for kids. Co-founders Al-Sammak and Shanshal will leverage the DRIVE Spark funding to further develop their product, produce a prototype and prepare for clinical testing with the support of MCH staff and physicians.
Streamlining surgeries
The Medloaner team
Medloaner is a Hamilton company established by co-founders Alex Paton and Kyrylo Pogrebenko, along with Aaron Donst, a research staff member at the Population Health Research Institute, who partnered with HHS and McMaster University to connect with champions from surgery and procurement.
Medloaner provides AI-powered supply chain optimization of surgical procedure kits, to streamline how surgical devices are managed and processed within a hospital setting. The impacts could generate significant reduction in manual processes that burden clinical resources, saving time and costs associated with the lengthy and repetitive processes of inventory tracking, sterilization, and processing of surgical equipment.
Medloaner will use Spark funding to further develop their technology with HHS, assessing the areas that machine learning technology could provide best value for ensuring compliance, safety and efficiency in surgical tool procurement and processing.
