Smart brains up in Canada: 11 early-stage neurotech entrepreneurs receive award by The Ontario Brain Institute (OBI)

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A record 11 Ontario inno­va­tors award­ed $50,000 to become Ontario Neu­rotech Entre­pre­neurs (press release):

“The Ontario Brain Insti­tute [OBI] today announced the 2017 win­ners of its pio­neer­ing Ontario Neu­rotech (ONtre­pre­neurs) pro­gram to help ear­ly-stage entre­pre­neurs take their ideas “from the lab to the marketplace.”

Since 2012, the ONtre­pre­neurs pro­gram has award­ed $50,000 to each win­ner and has sup­port­ed 34 entre­pre­neurs to-date. The pro­gram flows direct­ly from OBI’s man­date to unlock the huge com­mer­cial and med­ical poten­tial from what is already one of the largest com­mu­ni­ties of brain sci­en­tists in the world. One new ben­e­fit, through a col­lab­o­ra­tion with IBM Cana­da, is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to access the entre­pre­neur­ial ser­vices offered through IBM Glob­al Entre­pre­neur Pro­gram…”

The vast major­i­ty of the Win­ners are work­ing on Dig­i­tal Brain Health solu­tions and devices:

Ahmed Elmeli­gi
HiNT
HiNT is devel­op­ing a wear­able point-of-care device that mon­i­tors high-risk patients, and alerts them if they are hav­ing a stroke, enabling imme­di­ate med­ical atten­tion before it’s too late.

Joseph Geraci
Netra­Mark
Netra­Mark ser­vices phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies by using a new machine-learn­ing process in order to save time and mon­ey dur­ing the clin­i­cal tri­al process by reveal­ing pre­cise insights about patient populations.

Andrea Palmer
Awake Labs
Awake Labs is build­ing a plat­form to mea­sure indi­ca­tors of anx­i­ety in real-time to empow­er care and self-man­age­ment for peo­ple with neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders using machine learn­ing to ana­lyze behav­ioral and phys­i­o­log­i­cal data col­lect­ed through a phone app and a wearable.

Adam Pal­ter
Pronu­ra
Using eye-track­ing tech­nol­o­gy, Pronu­ra is devel­op­ing a non-inva­sive, and inex­pen­sive method for test­ing mul­ti­ple neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with accu­ra­cy unseen in any cur­rent tests.

Eli­av Shaked
RetiSpec
RetiSpec is devel­op­ing a non-inva­sive reti­nal scan­ner for ear­ly detec­tion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease pathol­o­gy years before symp­toms occur, so that clin­i­cians can inter­vene with emerg­ing ther­a­peu­tics ear­ly, when there’s a chance of actu­al­ly impact­ing the disease.

Mark Thoburn
Mobio Inter­ac­tive
Mobio Inter­ac­tive’s mobile med­i­ta­tion plat­form deliv­ers mea­sur­able, val­i­dat­ed mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion pro­grams to high stress clin­i­cal and work­place populations.

Michael Wil­land
Epineu­ron Technologies
Epineu­ron Tech­nolo­gies is build­ing the world’s first elec­tro­ceu­ti­cal device engi­neered to super­charge and accel­er­ate regen­er­a­tion of injured nerves. Our tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion that boosts the nerve’s nat­ur­al bio­chem­i­cal process to heal and repair itself when injured.

Eri­ca Tatham
Par­tic­i­pAid
Par­tic­i­pAid pro­vides neu­ro­sci­en­tists with engage­ment and knowl­edge trans­la­tion tools to make their research more acces­si­ble, trans­par­ent, and engag­ing. At the same time, Par­tic­i­pAid makes it eas­i­er for the pub­lic to dis­cov­er, learn about, and par­tic­i­pate in research, all the while mak­ing the expe­ri­ence more rewarding.

David Groppe
Wavem­iner
Wavem­iner pro­duces AI-pow­ered soft­ware to help physi­cians more accu­rate­ly and effi­cient­ly iden­ti­fy seizure-pro­duc­ing brain regions in patients suf­fer­ing from epilep­sy. Our soft­ware will improve sur­gi­cal access and out­comes for the 250,000 patients in North Amer­i­ca who could ben­e­fit from epilep­sy surgery.

News in Context:

• Info­graph­ic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020
• 10 neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment and brain health
• 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th, 2017)
• Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy can improve our lives…if we first address these Pri­va­cy and Informed Con­sent issues
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright