Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Transform HF

Subheadline

Transform HF, a �Թϱ�� institutional strategic initiative focused on digital innovation for heart failure care, is also supporting efforts to bring health care closer to home for the region's communities

Gloria Stoney waited five days in October to be medevaced to Toronto from her home in Peawanuck, Ont. – a Cree community near the shore of Hudson Bay – after she began experiencing serious cardiac symptoms.

“I didn’t feel so comfortable, but my family was there to take care of me and make sure I wasn’t alone,” she says.

Upon arriving at Toronto General Hospital, she was admitted immediately for further work-up and was able to return home to Peawanuck while she was monitored remotely. A short time later, she was flown out to Kingston, Ont., for more testing and returned home at the end of November.

Gloria’s experience criss-crossing the province could soon become less common for local residents thanks to efforts by the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority (WAHA) that are being supported by physicians at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, University Health Network (UHN).

With limited access to specialized cardiac care in the region, patients such as Gloria Stoney must travel more than 1,300 kilometres south by a combination of boat, train, plane and car (supplied image)

Building on an existing 2017 partnership, WAHA and UHN have signed a five-year memorandum of understanding that would support the cardiovascular needs of James Bay and Hudson Bay communities with a focus on direct care and remote management. That includes building local capacity and making use of remote technologies and other digital tools to bring diagnostics and treatment closer to where patients live.

“Signing the MOU emphasizes WAHA and UHN’s joint dedication to enhancing cardiac care in the James and Hudson Bay region," says Lynne Innes, WAHA's president and CEO. “Together, we’re working to improve cardiac care delivery, making it more accessible while enhancing quality of life.

“This partnership is a significant example of how health equity can be advanced in Indigenous communities.”

Using both Indigenous and western strategies, WAHA provides health care to six communities throughout the James Bay and Hudson Bay region, including Peawanuck.

Moose River (photo by Anne Simard)

Innes notes there is currently limited access to specialized cardiac care in the region, requiring patients such as Gloria to use a combination of boat, train, plane and car to travel more than 1,300 kilometres to the south.

“Leaving home for medical care is tough,” she says. “It requires the co-ordination of many people and organizations, and for our clients, it can mean a lot of anxiety from having to navigate a different city and hospital, all while missing the comfort of home. It’s a journey of healing mixed with the struggle of being far away from what’s familiar.”

Under the arrangement, co-ordinated clinical care would involve regular in-person visits by UHN staff to WAHA’s six communities and use of the Medly Program – a remote patient monitoring system for heart failure management that already counts more than 30 WAHA community members, including Gloria, as users.

There would also be opportunities for researchers and trainees to engage with WAHA and community members through Transform HF, a �Թϱ�� institutional strategic initiative focused on digital innovation for heart failure care that brings together the university and the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research – itself a partnership between the University of Toronto, UHN and the Hospital for Sick Children.

Left to right: Samuel Petrie, Stella Kozuszko, Erica Groenewoud, Mena Gewarges, Tanis Ross, Heather Ross, Elaine Innes, Sandra Kioke, Anne Simard and Sahr Wali (supplied photo)

Heather Ross, head of the cardiology division at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at UHN and a professor in �Թϱ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, says improving access to culturally safe cardiovascular care in WAHA’s communities could drastically improve patient care and outcomes in the region.

“Digital innovation is the key,” says Ross, who is also co-lead of Transform HF. “It can provide access to health-care services not historically offered in the region and that require clients to travel out of community.”

A recent community-based study in Moosonee, Ont., found that community members are receptive to digital health tools, though they must be designed in a way that reflects their values and integrates western and Indigenous approaches.

Gloria, for one, says digital tools such as Medly have made a difference in her life.

“Medly has been helpful,” she says. “It saves me running to the clinic every time something happens. You get a response right away, and someone reaches out to you when something is up.”

Gloria says she also appreciates that her results are available through the app, so when she needs to receive care outside of her community, there’s no need to re-explain her symptoms and management.

“I’m not the only one in Peawanuck with a heart issue,” Gloria says. “Medly benefits a lot of people here.”

The partners are also initiating a screening program for earlier detection and primary prevention of heart failure.

Additionally, the partnership will support ongoing community-based qualitative and quantitative research with a focus on field testing digital devices, point-of-care testing and other innovations in community and on the land.

WAHA and UHN will also work together to build capacity in the community. Mentorship programs will facilitate exposure to clinical and research environments for the next generation of WAHA-based health-care providers, and opportunities will be created for Toronto cardiology residents and fellows to participate in this collaboration through observerships.

“Working in community, with community, is so important – this MOU supports that,” Ross says. “When you add in the layer of digital health and remote monitoring, I think we can support WAHA in keeping their community members healthy at home.”

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Transform HF

Earbuds to monitor blood pressure? Researcher says they could outperform smartwatches

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 17:44:30 +0000

Earbuds to monitor blood pressure? Researcher says they could outperform smartwatches

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 03/16/2023 - 13:44

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Ken Christofferson, a doctoral trainee under �Թϱ�� Assistant Professor Alex Mariakakis's co-supervision, collects physiological data from earbuds for blood pressure monitoring (photo courtesy of TRANSFORM HF)

Augusta Lipscombe

Topic

Institutional Strategic Initiative

Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

When it comes to blood pressure monitoring, Alex Mariakakis and his team are all ears.

Alex Mariakakis

Mariakakis, an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, has been awarded a seed grant by TRANSFORM HF – a �Թϱ�� institutional strategic initiative that develops point-of-care diagnostics, wearables and AI technologies to monitor and proactively treat people with heart failure – for his project “Accessible Blood Pressure Estimation with Earbuds.”

As a ubiquitous computing researcher, Mariakakis’s work leverages pervasive technologies (smartphones, wearables, even Wi-Fi) for use in human-centred applications.

We sat down with Mariakakis to learn more about how earbuds could be used to monitor blood pressure and how he is revolutionizing digital health for heart failure care.

Can you describe your earbuds project?

At our core, we’re interested in trying to make blood pressure assessment more accessible to everyone.

Blood pressure cuffs are the gold standard for blood pressure assessment, but they can only be used on occasion: Someone has to sit down, put the cuff on their arm, and remain still to complete the measurement. This process can be cumbersome and people might not wear the cuff properly or follow the official protocol for measurement. And, of course, people must own blood pressure cuffs for self-monitoring at home.

We’re interested in leveraging existing technology – earbuds – to remove the cost of a blood pressure cuff and increase the ease of at-home blood pressure measurement. Our moonshot is to facilitate regular assessment of blood pressure and support self-management of heart failure.

Many earbuds have noise-cancelling technology, which relies on having an outer microphone and an in-ear microphone. The outer microphone listens for ambient sound while the in-ear microphone listens to what’s happening inside the ear. It turns out that the in-ear microphone is able to pick up on some very interesting sounds inside the body, including heart sounds. Research has shown that you can use the audio recorded from inside the body to measure heart rate, but you’re really able to get the same sounds you would hear from a stethoscope. We’re hoping that we can analyze these heart sounds using different signal processing techniques to infer someone’s blood pressure.

An earbud prototype that has been wired for data collection (photo courtesy of TRANSFORM HF)

How would a person with heart failure use this technology?

The nice thing about using earbuds for blood pressure monitoring is that people wouldn’t need to do anything differently. The idea is that you would just wear the earbuds and the in-ear microphone would collect audio and transmit it to your smartphone using Bluetooth – and the phone would analyze the heart sounds to determine your blood pressure. That information could be shown to you or it could be delivered to your care team.

Any earbud that has an in-ear microphone will be able to utilize this technology. So as long as patients already have active noise-cancelling earbuds, the technology will work!

Because earbuds can be used in noisy places and heart sounds can be very subtle, a quiet environment is going to be key for effective use. So, the most practical use case for this technology would be a telehealth consultation when people are often seated inside their homes.

How do earbuds differ from other sensing technologies?

More and more, we see smartwatches coming out with the ability to provide health metrics like heart rate, blood oxygenation, sleep scores and stress metrics. Why not earbuds? I think earbuds can do a lot of the same things – and in some cases better.

For example, a lot of the smartwatch-based systems for estimating blood pressure rely on looking at blood flow at a single site. The advantage of earbuds is that you get two locations – the left ear and the right ear — which can give us twice the amount of information. Some researchers have also found that we can measure blood pressure based on how long it takes for a heart pulse to go from one location of the body to the other. You can do this kind of estimation with a smartwatch, but the distance between points does not give a lot of room for error. With earbuds, you get a much larger distance. That’s one of the exciting opportunities where we think that we can actually outperform smartwatches.

Through this project, TRANSFORM HF is welcoming a new partner into its network: Tsinghua University. What role they will it play?

I’ve known Yuntao Wang (assistant professor, Tsinghua University and project coinvestigator) for a few years. When I was in Seattle, he was a visiting researcher and we collaborated on multiple projects. He’s a really great guy and it just so happens that he has also been doing research with earbuds. For example, in one project, he created a lightweight algorithm for detecting coughs from the audio recorded by earbuds.

Beyond bringing his technical expertise, Yuntao will also help us to generate a more diverse data set. We are hoping to do some data collection in China, which will be really helpful for ensuring that we have a diverse cohort. It will allow us to check that our algorithms apply to different populations, making us more confident in whatever we develop.

What are the next steps after this seed grant?

We’re very interested in monitoring blood pressure through any ubiquitous sensing mechanism. One study we’re hoping to do alongside this project, or maybe a little later, would be to compare and contrast all the different technologies being considered for blood pressure monitoring – earbuds, smartwatches, smartphones – to see what works best. Can we get better performance with earbuds versus a smartwatch? Can we combine a smartwatch and earbuds to get an even more accurate measurement?

Eventually, we want to deploy this in clinic. This will help us to answer all sorts of questions related to how we would integrate this kind of technology into health care: What benefits are there to measuring blood pressure multiple times a day for patients and clinicians? Is showing the data enough, or do we need to help people put that data into context? We also want to deploy our technology to those who are underserved. I am hoping that the TRANSFORM HF seed grant will help us initiate engagement with different groups, including Indigenous communities.

Tackling heart failure with a dose of technology: Groundbreakers S2 Ep.3

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 20:16:59 +0000

Tackling heart failure with a dose of technology: Groundbreakers S2 Ep.3 Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 10/27/2022 - 16:16

Topic

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Groundbreakers

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Graduate Students

Watch S2 Ep.3 of Groundbreakers

Researchers at the University of Toronto and its partner hospitals are on a mission to bring equitable health care to Canadians – and it’s all powered by technology.

In Ep. 3 of the Groundbreakers video series, host Ainka Jess explores how researchers with Transform HF, an institutional strategic initiative formed through a partnership between �Թϱ�� and the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, are helping to save lives by getting critical heart failure tools in the hands of patients across the country, including Indigenous communities in the North.

“We know there are incredible inequities in care and there are many drivers of those inequities – things related to the digital divide, access to technology, access to broadband, digital health literacy and skin tone, which can impact the function of various wearables,” says Transform HF Co-Director Heather Ross, who is scientific lead at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, the head of cardiology at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, University Health Network, and a professor of medicine in �Թϱ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

“We have to elevate the care for everybody. It should not matter where you live in Canada. Everybody should have the right to access high quality care.”

In the episode, Ross is joined by Transform HF researchers Amika Shah, a PhD candidate in health services research, and Daniel Franklin, an assistant professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

Groundbreakers is a multimedia series that includes articles at �Թϱ�� and features research leaders involved with �Թϱ��’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives, whose work will transform lives.

$90-million gift to the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research marks new era in cardiac health

lanthierj — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 20:26:43 +0000

$90-million gift to the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research marks new era in cardiac health

lanthierj Tue, 10/25/2022 - 16:26

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The Rogers Foundation announces a second landmark gift, building on its $130 million gift in 2014, to sustain the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research in perpetuity and bring the promise of precision cardiac health to patients across Canada and globally.

Advancement Staff

Topic

Hospital for Sick Children

Meric Gertler

In 2014, the Rogers Foundation made a record $130-million gift to establish the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research (TRCHR) – a visionary, collaborative initiative harnessing the strengths of its three institutional partners: The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), University Health Network (UHN), and the University of Toronto. That gift united these institutions with a vision to reduce significantly the impact of heart failure in Canada for children, youth and adults alike, with worldwide implications.

Now, in a new era of precision medicine, a second gift will make an even greater impact by harnessing the ability to treat each person according to their unique genetic, biological and environmental profiles to better diagnose, correct, predict, and prevent heart failure.

Today, the Rogers Foundation is announcing a $90-million benefaction – matched with $94.2 million in institutional support and additional fundraising – that will sustain, advance, and significantly expand the reach of the TRCHR.

In addition to enabling discovery research, this investment will help more patients with heart failure avoid hospitalization, understand the genetic basis of their disease and receive unique, personalized approaches to heart health. These advances will reduce instances of heart failure and sudden death while slowing heart failure’s progression, setting a new global standard in care.

Passionate champions for heart health

The Rogers Foundation’s combined gifts of $220 million to the TRCHR represent one of the most significant philanthropic investments in Canada’s history.

“We’re proud to support the work of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, which was passionately championed by our late mother Loretta from its infancy and reflects her and Ted Rogers’ spirit of innovation, ideals, and vision of cutting-edge care for all,” said Martha Rogers, chair of the Rogers Foundation. “Today marks the start of an exciting new era in heart health not just for Canadians, but for patients around the globe. Loretta championed this gift at our Foundation board table when we finalized our new commitment last November. She was proud of and passionate about the accomplishments of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research and the promise it held going forward to counter the ravages of heart failure and secure better heart health for everyone.”

“In just a few years, the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research has emerged as a model for heart health by following through on our promise of reducing rehospitalizations for heart failure by 50 per cent, among many other landmark accomplishments,” said Dr. Mansoor Husain, the TRCHR’s executive director.

“This generous investment from the Rogers Foundation, including the late Loretta Rogers, will not only sustain this impact but allow us to scale across Canada and the world, offering health-care providers 21st-century tools necessary to prescribe the right treatment for the right patient at the right time in the right place, keep more patients at home, prevent tragic and sudden deaths, and improve overall patient health and well-being.”

Wide-ranging impacts

This second investment by the Rogers Foundation will capitalize on the achievements of the TRCHR’s first eight years and ensure its work can continue in perpetuity.

First, building on its successful reduction of rehospitalizations at UHN by 50 per cent, the TRCHR will help prevent heart failure hospitalizations on a global scale. This will involve the enhancement of its Digital Health Platform, including Medly, a proprietary heart failure management program that enables the rapid assessment and triaging of patients in real time. The new gift will enhance the Digital Health Platform with cutting-edge wearables, novel sensor-based technologies and artificial intelligence-enabled algorithms, creating new systems of care. This program will expand nationally and internationally, beginning with remote, underserved communities as well as children and youth.

Second, the investment will help researchers predict and prevent heart failure by applying artificial intelligence and machine learning analyses to complex patient data, and by building on early genetic and biomarker research to reveal the underlying mechanisms of heart failure and to identify new therapeutic targets for treatment. The TRCHR will expand genomics-based precision diagnosis for heart failure in children, youth and adults, including identification of the genetic causes of cardiomyopathy and congenital heart disease.

Third, the gift will support innovation and education funds to accelerate collaboration on new heart failure care technologies and startups, and to help train the next generation of leaders in cardiac care.

“At SickKids, we envision a future where health care is individualized to each child’s unique characteristics to provide unprecedented outcomes for our patients and families. The Rogers Foundation’s generous support will help us move forward with this vision for Precision Child Health and improve cardiac health for children and youth, at SickKids and beyond,” said Dr. Ronald Cohn, president and CEO of SickKids.

“This new Rogers Foundation gift to the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research will have lasting, positive impacts on patients,” said Dr. Kevin Smith, president and CEO of University Health Network. “It will drive leading scientific research, cutting-edge technology, timely interventions, machine learning-derived algorithms, and leaps forward in genomic medicine.”

“Countless people across Canada and around the globe will benefit from this latest landmark benefaction to the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research,” said Meric Gertler, president of the University of Toronto. “On behalf of the University of Toronto, I join our institutional partners in expressing our profound gratitude to the Rogers Foundation, and especially to the late Loretta Rogers, for their continuing vision and transformational generosity.”

Addressing a complex global health threat

With many complex causes, heart failure remains one the world’s deadliest illnesses, affecting patients across the lifespan and in every demographic group. The high rate of hospitalizations for heart failure presents an additional burden on patients and their families, and on health-care systems in Canada and worldwide. One million Canadians suffer various forms of heart failure and 60,000 are newly diagnosed each year. Canadian heart failure patients experience 1.4 million hospital stays annually, averaging 10 days per stay, a rate that poses an additional burden on hospitals and patients as the system continues responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since its founding in 2014, the TRCHR has made major strides creating an effective, holistic approach to treating this health threat. The TRCHR has reduced re-hospitalizations for heart failure at UHN hospitals by 50 per cent with its at-home patient management technology, Medly, and reduced admissions to hospital from the ER by 25 per cent with a TRCHR-developed heart failure risk-score algorithm. TRCHR investigators have also been able to identify children at risk for sudden death by discovering a critical new biomarker related to heart failure risk. They have also diagnosed the causal factors of cardiomyopathy in twice as many patients as before the TRCHR began.

This collaborative, groundbreaking work has left an indelible impact on so many patients, including Katie Shea, who, thanks to the work of scientists and clinicians in the TRCHR’s Cardiac Genome Clinic, was found to have dilated cardiomyopathy – a genetic form of heart failure.

“I ended up being the first in my family’s generation to be diagnosed,” Shea says. “I got a call personally from one of the [TRCHR] researchers … the work that’s been done since has completely changed my experience and my journey. I’m supported and protected, and my family is supported and protected, and you can’t repay that. I want to thank the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research from the bottom of my heart.”

About the Rogers Foundation

The Rogers Foundation was established by the late Ted Rogers, who received a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in 1956, a law degree from Osgoode Hall in 1961, an honorary degree from Western University in 1996, an honorary degree from Trinity in 1997, an honorary degree from �Թϱ�� in 2002 and an honorary degree from Toronto Metropolitan University in 2004. His wife, the late Loretta Rogers, received honorary degrees from Western in 1996, Toronto Metropolitan University in 2004 and �Թϱ�� in 2018.

Ted Rogers was the founder, president and CEO of Rogers Communications Inc. Under Ted’s leadership, the company became a media and communications powerhouse, with interests in radio and television stations, cable distribution, publishing, wireless, internet, the Toronto Blue Jays and theRogers Centre. In his later years, Ted was diagnosed with a heart condition that eventually led to congestive heart failure. He passed away at the age of 75 in 2008. To honour his memory and unshakable entrepreneurial spirit, the Rogers Foundation made a landmark $130-million donation in 2014 to create the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research.

Loretta Rogers, who recently passed away at the age of 83, was Rogers Communications’ longest-standing director and a driving force leading the Rogers Foundation. She served on the boards of the University Health Network Foundation, the Bishop Strachan School Foundation, the Canadian Lyford Cay Foundation, the Robert Bateman Foundation and was the founding Director of Sheena's Place. She was also a driving force behind the initial $130-million gift to establish the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research.

The Rogers Foundation is a generous supporter of many other causes. The organization most recently donated $60 million to several charities to support Canadians affected by the COVID-19 crisis.

�Թϱ�� lowers flags to half-mast in honour of Loretta Rogers

geoff.vendeville — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 16:56:13 +0000

�Թϱ�� lowers flags to half-mast in honour of Loretta Rogers

geoff.vendeville Tue, 06/21/2022 - 12:56

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(Supplied photo)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Hospital for Sick Children

Philanthropy

Trinity College

The University of Toronto lowered flags to half-mast at Simcoe Hall Tuesday to honour Loretta Rogers, a leading philanthropist and longtime director at telecom giant Rogers Communications Inc.

Rogers – who died on June 11 at age 83, and who was remembered at a funeral service this morning – was a driving force behind a $130-million gift from the Rogers family to establish the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, named after her late husband and founder of Rogers Communications. The donation to the Hospital for Sick Children, University Health Network and �Թϱ�� was one of the largest private donations in Canadian health-care history.

“In the course of �Թϱ��’s history, few have forged change like Loretta Rogers,” said �Թϱ�� President Meric Gertler in a tribute published on �Թϱ��’s Defy Gravity website. “Her impact on research, academic programs and student financial support has transformed lives, created hope, and moved society forward. She was one of a kind. I offer the University’s sincerest condolences to Lisa, Ed, Melinda, Martha, and all the Rogers family.”

Trevor Young, dean of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, called the gift “transformational,” noting that it “catalyzed a tremendous surge of discovery – uncovering key genetic causes of heart failure, inventing new ways to repair injured hearts, and improving patient outcomes in multiple areas.”

The Rogers family has also supported �Թϱ��'s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Trinity College. In 2000, Loretta and Ted donated $25 million to �Թϱ�� Engineering, which led to the endowment of two research chairs, the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Chair in Engineering and the Velma M. Rogers Graham Chair in Engineering. The funding also supported graduate and undergraduate scholarships that have benefited 2,400 students to date.

In recognition of the gift, the faculty named its department of electrical and computer engineering after Edward S. Rogers Sr., Ted's father, who was a student in the department from 1919 to 1921. The Rogers family made the gift on what would have been Ted's father's 100th birthday.

Trinity College named its library in honour of Ted's stepfather, John W. Graham.

“With Loretta’s passing, the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has not only lost a generous champion but also a cherished friend,” said Dean Christopher Yip. “She and Ted were deeply connected to �Թϱ�� Engineering, and were tremendously important in helping us become Canada’s top-ranked engineering school and one of the best in the world. They always inspired us to reach higher.”

Having lost her dad to a stroke, PhD student launches cardiovascular screening startup

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 20:16:46 +0000

Having lost her dad to a stroke, PhD student launches cardiovascular screening startup

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 03/07/2022 - 15:16

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Stephanie Buryk-Iggers is the founder of a startup called SPARKED that's developing an inexpensive handheld device to screen for cardiovascular disease risk by using saliva samples (photo courtesy of Stephanie Buryk-Iggers_

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Entrepreneurship Week

Entrepreneurship

Graduate Students

Health Innovation Hub

ThisIsThePlace

Stephanie Buryk-Iggers is on a personal mission to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The second-year PhD student in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) was 26 years old when she lost her father to an unexpected stroke.

The experience left her devastated.

“My father was young, with no warning signs,” she says. “One night, we were saying goodnight to him and the next morning we woke up to him having a stroke. He died five days later.”

Buryk-Iggers learned that her father’s stroke was related to cardiovascular disease and that almost all such strokes are considered preventable with lifestyle changes, including exercise. So, she decided to leave her job at Right to Play, where she had been working after graduating with a bachelor of arts degree from McMaster University. She says she was determined to develop the scientific and research skills needed to help others learn the benefit of exercise as part of disease prevention.

She also launched a startup company called SPARKED in early 2021, offering a handheld device that screens for cardiovascular disease risk using a saliva sample. The rapid results provide an inexpensive way to screen patients without the need for a traditional laboratory or technical training.

“Clinicians can screen for cardiovascular disease risk and have the results available in minutes, while the patient is sitting in the same room,” says Buryk-Iggers. “They can have an immediate conversation around further tests and interventions, if needed, and alleviate any concerns.”

Stephanie Buryk-Iggers is pictured with her late father (photo courtesy of Stephanie Buryk-Iggers)

SPARKED was accepted by �Թϱ��'s H2i (Health Innovation Hub) incubator. Shortly after launching her company, Buryk built a team to work on developing the handheld device, including Morteza Jeyhani, a post-doctoral researcher in biomedical engineering at Ryerson University, Michael Glogauer, a professor at �Թϱ��’s Faculty of Dentistry and dentist-in-chief at the University Health Network (UHN), and Patrick Lawler, an assistant professor of medicine in �Թϱ��’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a cardiologist at Toronto General Hospital.

“I am immensely honoured to be a part of the H2i incubator and I can honestly say that much of our success is a direct result of their mentorship and education opportunities,” says Buryk-Iggers. “It is a remarkable place.”

Over the past year, her team was able to: secure a lab to build their prototype; place as finalists at four international and national-level pitch competitions; and earn the grand prize at H2i's FemSTEM pitch competition, which celebrates founders who are women.

SPARKED offers a handheld device that screens for cardiovascular disease risk using a sample of the saliva.

They were also accepted as part of the 2021 Entrepreneurship for Cardiovascular Health Opportunities (ECHO) program offered through the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research. The team is this week presenting as finalists for the iCUBE incubator's Pitch with a Twist competition, as well as at �Թϱ��'s Entrepreneurship Week pitch contest.

“The idea that my father had cardiovascular disease never crossed my mind,” says Buryk-Iggers. “Had there been an accessible, affordable and easy way to screen for it, perhaps my family would have been given a warning sign. That warning may have led to lifestyle change or an intervention that might have saved his life.”

She hopes SPARKED can help fill that gap for other people – in clinical settings and beyond.

“Eventually, we’d like individuals to be able to purchase the device on their own, administer the screening whenever they like and further increase accessibility to rural and remote areas,” she says.

Buryk-Iggers’s interest in working with remote communities stems from her personal experience.

During her work with Right to Play, an international humanitarian organization that uses sport as a tool for positive change, she worked with vulnerable groups in remote and marginalized areas of the world, including Northern Canada and Rwanda.

Living four to five months of each year in the communities, she trained local staff as program leaders based on their community-built objectives. She was introduced to the organization through her teammates on the women’s rugby team in McMaster University. Buryk-Iggers was captain of the team and also played for Team Ontario. In 2019, she was inducted into the Ontario Rugby Hall of Fame with the Toronto Scottish Rugby Football Club.

During her time with Right to Play, Stephanie Buryk-Iggers worked with vulnerable groups in Rwanda (photo courtesy of Stephanie Buryk-Iggers)

Beyond her startup, Buryk-Iggers works with PhD supervisor Daniel Santa Mina, an associate professor of exercise and cancer at KPE, to support the development and evaluation of the GoodHope Exercise and Rehabilitation (GEAR) program, Canada’s first exercise and rehabilitation program for people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a group of inherited disorders that affect connective tissues – primarily the skin, joints and blood vessel walls. She came to �Թϱ�� two years ago to study exercise in clinical settings after receiving a bachelor of science degree from Trent University and a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Ryerson University.

“Whether it’s through sport, research or industry, my personal mission is to improve health equity,” says Buryk-Iggers. “I am always trying to work towards improving technology and health programs where they do exist, and creating new ones where they don't exist.”

�Թϱ��-Ted Rogers Centre partnership to 'make leaps' in tech for heart failure care

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 26 May 2021 17:12:35 +0000

�Թϱ��-Ted Rogers Centre partnership to 'make leaps' in tech for heart failure care

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/26/2021 - 13:12

Cutline

TRANSFORM HF, a partnership between �Թϱ�� and the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, is being led by Craig Simmons in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Heather Ross in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Jeff Jurmain

Topic

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Insulin 100

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

A new partnership between the University of Toronto and the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research seeks to reimagine how high-quality, digital approaches to heart failure can be equitably delivered to all Canadians.

TRANSFORM HF will build, support and fund a community of multidisciplinary engineers, basic and data scientists, clinicians and health experts to develop solutions that will help monitor and proactively treat people with heart failure in their own homes and empower them toward greater self-care.

New therapies are dramatically improving quality of life and survival in heart failure, and technology is capable of changing how the disease is managed, says Heather Ross, a professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and scientific lead at the Ted Rogers Centre.

“Unfortunately, these therapies and approaches are underutilized and inaccessible to a lot of Canadians. Our goal is to unite the right people in devising new medical and artificial intelligence technologies that will achieve equitable access to high-level care across our country’s vast geography.”

Heart failure affects at least one million Canadians, statistics show. Nine out of 10 die within 10 years, having experienced a reduced quality of life, frequent lengthy hospital stays, and chronic disruptions to jobs, relationships and family life.

Ross is co-leading TRANSFORM-HF with Craig Simmons, a professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the Institute for Biomedical Engineering.

“We will bring together the vast amount of technology developed at the University of Toronto and deploy it in new ways,” says Simmons, who is also a Ted Rogers Centre scientific lead and director of the Translational Biology and Engineering Program. “Our engineers and scientists will help our clinical partners deliver expert care to remote locations and perform continuous monitoring to keep people with heart failure safe.”

He says some of these innovations, including biosensors and remote monitoring tools, already exist, while others will be co-designed by experts in different fields, and by patients themselves.

“Technology is often developed in a bubble, so for our engineers and scientists to collaborate with patients on design will change everything,” says Simmons. “The ability to interact with end users early will help us create solutions that work more quickly and more smoothly.”

“In medicine we must do things with patients, not to patients,” adds Ross. “They are the ones who will use these technologies. They can tell us if our ideas make sense, or how they can be tweaked.”

A key goal of the program is to build user-centered technology that can be adapted by any patient, in any environment, with any specific need.

The TRANSFORM HF team will devise a new era of biosensors that can be packaged and used by Canadians in any community. These include wearable sensors built into fabric – socks, patches, vests – that monitor clinically relevant vitals like heart rate, blood pressure, breathing patterns and fluid accumulation. They may include a mobile app that makes use of a special camera to assess blood flow below the skin, and tech that syncs with consumer products like the Apple Watch or Fitbit.

Simmons says the team will also conceive new ways of bringing diagnostics that are done in the lab to people’s homes.

“Patients often have to travel for them and wait days for results,” he says. “What if we could give them a small device that, for instance, takes a pinprick of blood, runs a test and produces results in 15 minutes? These microtechnologies already exist, but they haven’t been engineered to specifically focus on markers important for heart failure.”

Such innovations can yield oceans of data, which may hold new signals that reveal the state of someone’s heart failure or the risk of it worsening. The machine learning component of TRANSFORM HF is about creating algorithms that can predict someone’s risk of hospitalization, and enabling clinicians to intervene early to help keep that person in a stable condition.

TRANSFORM HF plans on training graduate students, scientists and clinicians across disciplines, beyond the lab and in communities and homes where their innovations are to be used.

“An immersive training experience allows our students to see first-hand what the constraints are, what power is available, what internet connectivity is like, and who the people are that they are designing technology for,” says Simmons. “New innovations will be set up to make a true difference in people’s lives.”

This training also includes commercialization, as students and fellows will explore entrepreneurship and vital aspects of translating technology such as regulatory rules.

All of this will rely on brand new partnerships with patients and communities at all stages of development.

“This is a special opportunity to co-create and test new inventions in a collaborative sandbox, and I expect it to build into a long-term funding model to create a pipeline of innovations in the heart failure space,” Simmons says.

“For decades, we’ve watched heart failure care evolve incrementally,” says Ross. “But with all stakeholders working together, we will generate ideas that allow for transformative changes in how we manage this complex disease.

“Instead of taking steps we can make leaps.”

‘Our very first biotech win’: How �Թϱ��’s discovery of insulin made it a research and innovation powerhouse

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 17:05:12 +0000

‘Our very first biotech win’: How �Թϱ��’s discovery of insulin made it a research and innovation powerhouse

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 11/04/2020 - 12:05

Cutline

�Թϱ��'s Patricia Brubaker, who has spent nearly 40 years studying anti-diabetic gut hormones, says the future of diabetes research will be figuring out how to prevent the disease in the first place (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Banting & Best

Diabetes

Entrepreneneurship

Health Innovation Hub

Insulin

Royal Society of Canada

Startups

Hospital for Sick Children

Ted Sargent

ThisIsThePlace

For nearly four decades, Patricia Brubaker has been investigating the biological activities of anti-diabetic gut hormones secreted by the intestine.

Her work is focused on the fundamental biology of the hormones and has contributed to development of drugs for the treatment of patients with Type 2 diabetes. The drugs work by stimulating the secretion of insulin, helping to lower blood sugar levels and reducing appetite, among other effects.

Brubaker understands all too well the impact such research has had on people’s lives – she is a Type 1 diabetes patient herself.

“The progress over the last 40 years has been simply phenomenal in terms of how people with diabetes are treated clinically, the extension of their life spans and the prevention of complications,” says Brubaker, a professor in the departments of physiology and medicine in the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a member of the faculty’s Banting & Best Diabetes Centre.

Brubaker, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada who recently won a lifetime achievement award from Diabetes Canada, says huge strides are being made in the treatment of the disease, which affects as many as one out of three Canadians when the condition known as prediabetes is taken into account.

But she stresses that research on prevention is equally crucial.

“What we need to do is figure out how we can prevent diabetes in the first place,” she says.

“Diabetes prevention science is going to be all about how we can predict the onset of diabetes, which is great. But if we know someone’s going to develop diabetes, how do we prevent it? That’s still an area of intense investigation.”

These and other pressing questions on the future of diabetes treatment and prevention science will be addressed by Brubaker and other experts at a Nov. 26 panel discussion that’s part of a virtual symposium examining the impact of the discovery of insulin by �Թϱ��’s Frederick Banting and Charles Best, who worked with J.J.R Macleod and James Collip. “The Legacy of Insulin Discovery: Origins, Access, and Translation” will examine insulin and diabetes from a range of perspectives, including laboratory research, clinical practice, pharmacy, commercialization, entrepreneurship, digital technology and socio-economic factors.

It’s the first in a series of events organized by �Թϱ�� to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the discovery of insulin, and one of the highlights of the 2020 Celebration of Excellence and Engagement, a week-long exploration of scholarly, scientific and artistic topics presented by �Թϱ�� and the Royal Society of Canada.

Learn more about the Nov. 26 insulin symposium

“The discovery of insulin by Frederick Banting and Charles Best, and their team, is a testament to what we can achieve when we empower scientific research and find ways to share it with the world,” says University Professor Ted Sargent, �Թϱ��’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“That extraordinary work done in the early 1920s not only saved millions of lives, it laid the foundation for the University of Toronto’s world-class student training programs and robust partnerships with hospitals and industry – collaborations that continue to revolutionize health care today.”

Brubaker says collaborations have been crucial in her research career. Recently, she’s partnered with researchers who study gut bacteria, which appears to play a role in the production of the gut hormones that she studies: GLP-1 and GLP-2.

Working with Apple, �Թϱ�� researchers to test smartwatch’s ability to help prevent heart failure

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 18:19:42 +0000

Working with Apple, �Թϱ�� researchers to test smartwatch’s ability to help prevent heart failure

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 09/18/2020 - 14:19

Cutline

�Թϱ�� researchers based at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research will test whether the new Apple Watch Series 6 and its blood oxygen sensor can collect data to help manage heart failure (photo by James D. Morgan via Getty Images)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Medicine

Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre

The University of Toronto’s Heather Ross, one of Canada’s top cardiologists, is seeking to miniaturize life-saving medical equipment so that it fits easily into a patient’s pocket – or around their wrist.

She and a team of other �Թϱ�� Faculty of Medicine researchers – based at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research and University Health Network (UHN) – will work with tech giant Apple this fall to test whether the new Apple Watch Series 6 and its blood oxygen sensor can collect data to help manage heart failure.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity,” Professor Ross says. “We know that �Թϱ�� is a top global university and we know that UHN is number four in the world as per Newsweek, so to have Apple also recognize that is a tremendous honour – and I feel an enormous responsibility to make sure the study is done right.”

Ross will be joined in the project by fellow �Թϱ�� researchers Yas Moayedi, of the department of medicine, and Chris McIntosh, of the department of medical biophysics. The Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research is a partnership between �Թϱ��, UHN and the Hospital for Sick Children.

In a clip posted to Twitter after the Apple product launch – retweeted by Apple CEO Tim Cook to his over 12 million followers – Ross, wearing a white lab coat and scrubs, gestures to a room full of heart-monitoring equipment and says the goal is to condense all of it into a device the size of a smartwatch.

About 600,000 Canadians are living with heart failure, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, but Ross puts the number closer to one million. One-in-five people over the age of 40 will experience heart failure, she adds.

“This is a global problem with a very significant impact on a patient’s quality of life and their survival,” Ross says, noting the average life expectancy after diagnosis is just 2.1 years.

We’re taking cardiac healthcare into the future.

Dr. Heather Ross talks about @trogersresearch & @UHN research collaboration with @Apple, which looks at shifting some traditional, in-hospital monitoring practices for heart failure patients to a wearable device - Apple Watch. pic.twitter.com/G8uQ5Hmd3Q
— Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (@PMunkCardiacCtr) September 15, 2020

When Ross describes the symptoms of heart failure, she draws on experience beyond her medical training and interaction with patients. In 2006, while hiking Antarctica’s highest mountain to raise money for heart failure research, she suffered pulmonary edema – a life-threatening build-up of fluid in the lungs that many people with heart failure experience.

One of her former heart transplant patients helped saved her life.

“There is nothing that equates to experiencing what your patients go through,” says Ross.

She says wearable technology, like the sensors in the new Apple Watch, could allow doctors to keep closer watch on patients’ health beyond the narrow window when they see each other in the clinic.

“It’s really blind luck if the day that the patient is coming to see you in clinic is the day they feel unwell,” Ross says. “In fact, most of what happens to patients happens in between their episodes of care – and, if that’s the case, then to a certain degree we’re doing everything backwards.”

Sumbul Ahmad Desai, vice-president Apple Health, speaks during a live Apple event this week where the Apple Watch Series 6 was unveiled.

Apple’s watch isn’t the only tool being used to improve patient care between visits to the doctor’s office.

At UHN, cardiologists already have years of experience monitoring and managing patients’ health outside the hospital using a self-management app called Medly that connects them with doctors. It allows patients to keep track of their weight, blood pressure and heart rate and pushes personalized care instructions to the user. The system also alerts the patient’s care team when there is a problem.

In a recent paper, Ross and fellow UHN and �Թϱ�� researchers share results suggesting a 50 per cent drop in heart failure-related hospitalizations and 24 per cent decrease in the number of all-cause hospitalizations in the first six months after program enrollment.

“Medly is changing the landscape of heart failure and it’s still looking at relatively common and easy-to-measure and monitor items,” she says. “The real question is: will having more sophisticated sensors change what we do?

“That’s what we have to find out.”

Vivek Goel to step down as �Թϱ��’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 13:53:26 +0000

Vivek Goel to step down as �Թϱ��’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 06/16/2020 - 09:53

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Vivek Goel, who led �Թϱ��'s extensive research operation for the last six years, will take on a new role as a special adviser to �Թϱ��’s president and provost, helping to guide the university’s COVID-19 planning efforts (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

School of Cities

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Entrepreneurship

Medicine by Design

Meric Gertler