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CAMH, Assurex Health Partner to Bring Personalized Care to More Canadians

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Assurex Health combine resources to bring personalized medicine in psychiatry, reducing the current trial-and-error approach

TORONTO – The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada’s leading hospital for mental health, and Assurex Health, a global leader in personalized medicine, have signed an agreement for a joint venture to bring the benefits of this treatment approach to more Canadians.

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Logo

The personalized approach helps to match the right medication at the right dose for each patient, based on their genetic makeup. Using Assurex Health’s GeneSight panel, physicians can easily see which psychiatric medications are likely to be effective for each patient and which ones are not, often avoiding treatment failure and side effects.

“This partnership between CAMH and Assurex Health is essential to advance the widespread use of personalized medicine in psychiatry, and improve health care for Canadians who need medications for mental health problems,” said Dr. James Kennedy, head of the Tanenbaum Centre for Pharmacogenetics at CAMH. This approach is a game-changer from the current trial-and-error approach to prescribing, which results in many patients having to try different psychiatric medications, each with potential side-effects, before the best medication for them can be determined.

AssureRx Canada (ARxC) has been established as a subsidiary of the U.S. company, with its Canadian office and laboratory on CAMH premises. Assurex Health will provide backing for ARxC operations. CAMH holds a minority equity share in AssureRx Canada and will receive royalties on the sale of genetic tests that incorporate CAMH-discovered genetic markers.

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Five UTEST companies to tackle critical healthcare challenges

Program’s second cohort includes eQOL, E-Twenty Development, Root2Crown, Treata Smart Solutions and TrendMD

University of TorontoTORONTO (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.

UTEST, supported by the University of Toronto’s Connaught Fund, Innovations & Partnerships Office (IPO) and MaRS Innovation (MI), is part of a growing system of incubators and commercialization support services at U of T.

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).

The second cohort has big shoes to fill. UTEST’s first cohort has collectively secured over $1.2 million in follow-on funding and currently employs 29 highly skilled people (HQPs). Each company also filed solid patent protection and most have secured customers. Notably, Whirlscape’s Indiegogo campaign secured over $87,000 in crowd-sourced product funds from nearly 10,000 users, and was featured in the Financial Post, TechCrunch, Mashable and The Verge, among other global media outlets.

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