MI’s Fanny Sie and Shotlst Co-founder Matt Ratto talk bioprinting, healthcare, civil rights and home manufacturing with Steve Paikin
Fanny Sie, project manager in physical sciences and medical devices with specialization in medical imaging, appeared on TVO’s The Agenda on June 5, 2013 to discuss 3D printing.
MaRS Innovation Project Manager Fanny Sie discusses 3D printing, the Bioprinter technology and the implications for society and human health on TVO’s The Agenda.
Sie manages the Bioprinter technology, which was touched upon during the interview. The bioprinter was invented by Axel Guenther, a professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, PhD student Lian Leng and a team of other researchers.
The Globe and Mail covered the Bioprinter’s development on January 20, 2013; an excerpt of their interviews with Leng and Guenther was included in the program.
Bioprinting and the Internet of Things
The Agenda’s 3D printing episode also included a second segment exploring its implications for home manufacturing and civil liberties. The guests included Matt Ratto, assistant professor in U of T’s Faculty of Information and co-inventor and CEO of Shotlst (a UTEST company).
Professor Matt Ratto, co-founder of Shotlst and director of the Critical Making Lab, discusses 3D printing, home manufacturing and civil liberties on TVO’s The Agenda.
Ratto described his experience downloading and printing the Liberator, a gun that can be printed using 3D printing technology, to better understand the process required and the resulting gun’s capabilities.
Fanny Sie, project manager in physical sciences and medical devices , MaRS Innovation.
MaRS Innovation’s Fanny Sie, project manager in physical sciences and medical devices with specialization in medical imaging, is appearing on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin at 8 pm on June 5, 2013 to discuss 3D printing and the technology’s applications in healthcare and other aspects of human society.
Sie manages the Bioprinter technology, which was invented by Axel Guenther, a professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, PhD student Lian Leng and a team of other researchers. The Globe and Mail covered the Bioprinter’s development on January 20, 2013.
MI start-up ApneaDx Inc. among program’s first round of participants
The first three companies selected to participate in the MaRS EXCITE program aim to improve outcomes for breast cancer, sleep apnea and drug-resistant hypertension.
The Excellence in Clinical Innovation and Technology Evaluation (EXCITE) initiative helps companies accelerate the adoption and reimbursement of innovative health technologies through a single, harmonized, pre-market, evidence-based process.
EXCITE has selected ApneaDx Inc., Medtronic of Canada Ltd. and Rna Diagnostics Inc. as the program’s initial participants.
“The Inventor of the Year Award is meant to recognize inventions that have the potential to improve our quality of life,” said ProfessorPaul Young, vice-president (research and innovation) and a member of MaRS Innovation’s Board of Directors. “The winning inventions represent the very best of innovation at U of T, and on behalf of the university, I extend my congratulations.
Program’s second cohort includes eQOL, E-Twenty Development, Root2Crown, Treata Smart Solutions and TrendMD
TORONTO (May 14, 2013) — Five companies tackling pervasive healthcare challenges — such as assessing dental health, helping patients and medical personnel navigate hospitals with greater ease, staying current with medical literature, or creating digital tools to help care for the elderly or those with chronic health conditions — have been admitted to the University of Toronto Early Stage Technology (UTEST) program’s second cohort.
Two companies in UTEST’s second cohort, E-Twenty Development Inc. and Treata Smart Solutions Inc. are participating in Canada 3.0 at the Metro Convention Centre May 14 and 15, 2013, in Toronto.
This announcement was covered in PE Hub.
Each company will receive up to $25,000, incubation space in the MaRS Discovery District, mentoring and business strategy support to develop protectable intellectual property, launch their products and gain market traction. They are also eligible to become clients of MaRS Discovery District’s ICE or Healthcare practices.
UTEST seeks scalable, enterprise-focused software applications interested in building business-to-business customer bases — and preferably operational products with a short term to market. The program is co-directed by Kurtis Scissons (U of T IPO) and Dr. Lyssa Neel (MI).
Biotechnology Focus, a compendium of the Canadian life sciences industry, has published a guest column by MaRS Innovation President & CEO, Raphael Hofstein. The article explores the role of catalysis…
“If there’s one profession for which you don’t want students to have learning gaps, it’s medicine,” Rebecca Walberg wrote in the Smart Shift: Agenda for Innovation section in the Financial Post on May 7 (reprinted in the Vancouver Sunon May 9 and in the Calgary Herald on June 6, 2013). “Yet that’s exactly what Dr. Paolo Campisi saw while working with medical students at the University of Toronto.”
Walberg’s article, “Innovation in medical learning a Canadian business success story,” describes the process Campisi and his colleague and co-founder Dr. Vito Forte, both of the Hospital for Sick Children and cross-appointed to U of T, undertook to design the OtoSim device, which addresses the gap in how students were learning skills associated with otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat diseases or infections).
Here’s an excerpt (beginning with a quote from Dr. Forte):
“The answer wasn’t more time to lecture or show big pictures on a screen, but rather some kind of instrument that would mimic the experience of looking into an ear with an otoscope. And we went through a number of prototypes developing a simulator that can do just that.”
The result is the OtoSim, brought to market and sold by OtoSim Inc. The simulator consists of a rubber ear made to scale, and a computer display integrated into the model where the eardrum would be in a patient, which can display images of ear canals that correspond to a wide range of medical conditions.
Lyssa Neel, co-director of UTEST and MaRS Innovation project manager
MaRS Innovation’s (MI) Lyssa Neel, co-director of the UTEST program and project manager, has been selected to represent MI’s ICT start-up companies at the TechWomen Canada program in San Francisco, which runs May 13 to 16, 2013.
TechWomen Canada is run by the Canadian Consulate and is focused on providing Canadian women leaders in the ICT sector an opportunity to expand both professional and business networks in Silicon Valley.
Every six weeks, MaRS Innovation’s marketing and communications manager writes a guest post for the MaRS Discovery District blog profiling MI’s activities or one of our start-up companies. You can read the original post on the MaRS blog.
Nearly 14,000 delegates—representing over 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centres and related organizations across the United States and more than 60 countries—attended the 2013 BIO International Convention from April 22 to 26, 2013.
The event drew biotechnologists, pharmaceutical industry executives and life sciences researchers, along with sector-based organizations and associations, to Chicago.
According to a press release issued by the conference organizers, BIO 2013 offered “a record number of partnering meetings and panel sessions on the latest science, policy issues and business opportunities and challenges facing the biotechnology industry.”
