The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids)

BioCentury features ScarX Therapeutics as emerging company

February 10, 2015
Susanne Staer
Media Coverage

ScarX Therapeutics, a MaRS Innovation start-up company from the Hospital for Sick Children, was featured in “Scars Defaced,” a BioCentury emerging company profile by Michael J. Haas.

The profile is available to BioCentury subscribers on their website (paywall in place).

Here’s a short excerpt:

ScarX Corp. has reformulated a generic analgesic that is marketed primarily in Europe into a topical cream that patients can self-administer
after surgery to prevent scarring. The company expects cosmetic and reconstructive surgeons to be early adopters of its topical nefopam, and
thinks patients will pay out of pocket.

Nefopam is a non-opioid analgesic that is marketed in Europe, Australia and parts of Asia in oral or IV formulations to treat pain, but is not approved for use in North America. ScarX has exclusive rights from The Hospital for Sick Children to one issued patent and five patents pending covering the use of nefopam as an antiscarring agent, and its topical formulation.

BCS’s Bedside PEWS™ covered in Hospital News

Bedside Clinical Systems and their flagship product, Bedside PEWS™, were featured in the February 2014 issue of Hospital News.

Bedside Clinical Systems‘ (BCS) flagship product, the Bedside Paediatric Warning System or BedSidePEWS™, was covered in the February 2014 edition of Hospital News.

The article, written by Rajesh Sharma who is president and CMO of BCS, explains how the technology helps decrease the amount of code blues in paediatric patients.

Invented by Dr. Christopher Parshuram of the Hospital of Sick Children (SickKids), Bedside PEWS™ is now in three hospitals in Canada, the United States and New Zealand. The technology received FDA approval last year.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The program digitally logs, charts, and evaluates seven vital sign items thst sre part of routine clinical assessments and then summarizes them into a singly score. From the BedsidePEWS™ score, care providers can better match the level of care with the patient’s required needs, thereby improving patient outcomes and reducing the number of urgent calls, code blue incidents and related deaths.

“Identifying at-risk patients is significant since approximately 5,000 children in North America experience a code blue event each year, from which too many children die or sustain neurological deficit. BedsidePEWS™ hopes to improve outcomes for these patients and their families,” says Dr. Parshuram.

Bedside Paediatric Early Warning System (BedsidePEWS™) Earns FDA 510(k) Approval

Bedside Clinical Systems to bring paediatric care solution to U.S. hospitals TORONTO, Canada (October 24, 2013) — Bedside Clinical Systems (BCS)’s flagship solution, Bedside Paediatric Early Warning System (BedsidePEWSTM), has…

Portfolio Update: OtoSim on Healthy Sim blog; UTEST grads Whirlscape and Crowdmark launch betas

August 21, 2013
Susanne Staer
Crowdmark

Here’s a snapshot of some MI start-up news that you may have missed over the last week: OtoSim Inc.'s medical training simulators, which teach otoscopy and otolargyngology skills in an…

Financial Post profiles OtoSim Inc.’s innovative medical learning device

“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 Sun on 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.

Canadian biotech sector makes strong showing at BIO2013

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.

Downtown Chicago skyline in late April — **Chicago**‘s famous downtown skyline during the 2013 BIO Convention.

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.”

How Canada’s health-care industry is riding a wave of transition

Bedside Clinical Systems featured on Research Innovation and Commercialization Centre (RICC) panel discussion In an article for YourMississaugaBiz.com, Jon Cook writes, " 'The health-care industry is relying more on the…

U of T med students participate in mass medical simulation exercise

OtoSim Night revolutionizes how students learn to identify ear pathologies

On Feb. 13, 2013, almost 100 second-year University of Toronto (U of T) medical students participated in an optional, intensive, one-hour otoscopy workshop using the OtoSim™ — a training and simulation system that is radically changing the way students in Canada and around the world learn this poorly-acquired medical skill.

And, if you want to use simulation technology to change the way medical professionals are taught, ear disease is a good place to start.

Additional photos from this event are posted on OtoSim Inc.’s Flickr account. A longer version of the OtoSim Night at U of T video is also available on the company’s YouTube channel.

“Historically, otoscopy simulation involved looking at an image of an eardrum on a piece of film at the end of a rubber ear,” said Dr. Andrew Sinclair, CEO of OtoSim Inc. “OtoSim™ has a digital image bank that is orders of magnitude more extensive. The instructor can electronically point to areas within the image and confirm that the student sees the pathology of interest. Diagnostic accuracy goes up enormously.”

MaRS Innovation awarded $15 million to further commercialize world-leading Canadian innovations

February 6, 2013
Susanne Staer
Awards

Networks of Centres of Excellence recognizes strength of partnership between MI and its 16 member institutions

TORONTO, February 5, 2013 — How do you make sure the brilliant ideas emerging from Toronto’s academic research community get the best possible chance to succeed?

MaRS Innovation (MI), created in 2008, bridges the chasm between these early-stage technologies and successful start-up companies and licensable technologies. By offering early-stage funding in tandem with hands-on management, mentorship and IP strategy protection, MI acts as a commercialization agent for its 16 member institutions.

This announcement was covered by TechVibes, Yonge Street Media and CanTech Letter.

The Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) has recognized the increasing strength of this novel partnership by awarding MI $14.95 million in funding through the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program.

Bedside Clinical Systems featured in Philadelphia’s MedCity News

Bedside Clinical Systems (BCS) participated in Philadelphia’s 2012 Canada-U.S. eHealth Summit on November 28.

Twelve of the 65 participating companies were selected to pitch a group of over 100 chief medical information officers, chief information officers and chief medical officers from U.S. hospitals, along with venture capitalists and industry representatives.

BCS’s CEO Rajesh Sharma delivered a strong pitch and was interviewed for a story in MedCity News.