The Ontario Brain Institute selects 6 neurotech start-ups for ONtrepreneurs program

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Six break­through neu­rotech start-ups win cov­et­ed Ontario Brain Insti­tute award (press release):

“Canada’s most pres­ti­gious ear­ly-stage neu­rotech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neur awards were announced today by the Ontario Brain Insti­tute (OBI). The ONtre­pre­neurs pro­gram, the sin­gle largest fun­der of ear­ly-stage neu­rotech entre­pre­neurs in Cana­da, is invest­ing in six ear­ly-stage ven­tures this year to help accel­er­ate their path to com­mer­cial­iza­tion through access to fund­ing, resources, and men­tor­ship … “The ONtre­pre­neurs pro­gram is at the heart of OBI’s man­date to unlock the huge com­mer­cial and med­ical poten­tial from one of the largest com­mu­ni­ties of brain sci­en­tists in the world, right here in Ontario,” said Dr. Tom Mikkelsen, OBI’s Pres­i­dent and Sci­en­tif­ic Direc­tor. “This year’s win­ners are offer­ing ground­break­ing tech­nolo­gies to tack­le some of the most press­ing chal­lenges for patients, fam­i­lies and care­givers liv­ing with brain disorders.”

Win­ners this year are:

Cere­bian has devel­oped a Brain­OS, a Brain-Com­put­er Inter­face based oper­at­ing sys­tem that enables inca­pac­i­tat­ed patients to ful­ly con­trol elec­tron­ic devices with their brainwaves.

Using monoc­u­lar video, Curv trans­forms the cam­era on any mobile device into a diag­nos­tic tool, using machine learn­ing analy­sis of body move­ments to pre­dict, diag­nose, and mon­i­tor brain disorders.

Nanol­o­gy Labs has devel­oped a rev­o­lu­tion­ary non-tox­ic MRI con­trast agent which cir­cum­vents effi­ca­cy lim­i­ta­tions of oth­er agents cur­rent­ly avail­able. The agent, Man­ganes­can™, uses the ele­ment man­ganese to illu­mi­nate ear­ly stage tumors, specif­i­cal­ly in the brain. Ear­ly stage detec­tion pro­vides clin­i­cians advance knowl­edge for diag­no­sis, bet­ter treat­ment options and patient outcome.

Sup­ports Health is an app that empow­ers fam­i­ly care­givers with psy­choe­d­u­ca­tion, dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics, and peer sup­port. The app will be avail­able in 2019 through a month­ly sub­scrip­tion, and insti­tu­tion­al­ly to hos­pi­tals, care cen­tres, fam­i­ly health prac­ti­tion­ers, uni­ver­si­ties and insurers.

TruReach is a self-help app for peo­ple with mild-to-mod­er­ate depres­sion and anx­i­ety. It allows users to com­plete step-by-step exer­cis­es and track symp­toms to mon­i­tor their con­di­tion until they can meet with a psy­chol­o­gist. The app is avail­able in the app store and has 25,000 downloads.

Wel­bi’s soft­ware helps retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties reduce social iso­la­tion by pro­vid­ing a rich and per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ence to their res­i­dents and fam­i­lies. Wel­bi acts as a per­son­al assis­tant automat­ing admin­is­tra­tive tasks, pro­vid­ing alerts and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions so the staff can focus on build­ing a unique com­mu­ni­ty and mean­ing­ful relationships.

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