At this year’s MaRS Health Innovation Week, the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation (CABHI), powered by Baycrest, hosted our inaugural CABHI/MaRS Pitch Competition.
The new session featured a roster of aging and brain health companies vying for the CABHI/MaRS Pitch Competition Award for Innovation in Aging, moderated by Mel Barsky, Director, Business Development at CABHI. Each company had just a few minutes to sell the audience on their product, with a final real-time audience poll determining the winner.
The most exciting part? Seeing the breadth of promising innovations in the aging and brain health space, in diverse areas from medication devices to early dementia detection to care coordination apps. We heard from 11 companies, many of which are part of CABHI’s innovation pipeline:
Spencer Waugh, CEO of AceAge, makes his pitch
- AceAge – Karie is an automated medication delivery system developed by AceAge that makes it easy for patients to take the right medication at the right time, increasing adherence.
- BrainFx – BrainFx assessments are focused on promoting cognitive health by measuring and evaluating cognitive skills and quickly delivering real-world applicable performance results to an individual’s healthcare team.
- Careteam – A care coordination and navigation platform designed to bring together the multidisciplinary modern team for patients with complex care needs.
- Catalyst Healthcare – Uses a multi-disciplinary approach of care team members including pharmacists, caregivers, and the spencer medication adherence platform to provide healthcare in the homes of the high-risk, chronically ill population.
- LocateMotion – Offers a range of safety products, such as the LocateMotion GPS Watch and GPS Tracker, designed to provide seniors with the freedom to live independently.
- MEMOTEXT – The company’s Ring of Support is an adaptive and personalized engagement system to support individuals living with dementia at home as well as their caregivers, and reduce the cost of long-term healthcare interventions.
- Motitech – Motiview is a technology that helps seniors and those living with dementia increase their physical activity and cognitive training by taking a virtual bicycle trip through ‘memory lane’ and familiar surroundings. Motitech recently established its first North American office in Ottawa, Canada.
- MySense – A well-being analytics platform developed in the UK that learns a person’s activity patterns to quickly identify declining health or immediate care needs.
- RetiSpec – The company is developing a tool for detection of early Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers in the human eye, based on machine learning.
- uCarenet – uCarenet developed a homecare marketplace that allows seniors and their family members to connect with professional caregivers to hire direct home care services.
- Welbi – The digital platform helps retirement communities personalize their residents’ experiences so that older adults can maintain a higher quality of life.
It was a close race, but the winner was AceAge. Spencer Waugh, CEO of Aceage, accepted the 2019 CABHI/MaRS Pitch Competition Award for Innovation in Aging.
Thanks to all the companies that participated!
