Among the many projects coming out of the the innovators at MaRS Discovery District is a new set of three health technologies: an at-home tool for diagnosing sleep apnea, which is correlated with strokes and heart attacks (from
ApneaDx Inc.); a new treatment for hypertension (from
Medtronic of Canada Ltd.), and a tool to help determine the efficacy of breast cancer treatments (from
Rna Diagnostics Inc.).
What those three companies have in common: they are the first set of participants to pass through MaRS's EXCITE program, which is aimed specifically at helping medical innovations succeed in the marketplace.
EXCITE (Excellence in Clinical Innovation and Technology Evaluation) was born out of a recognition that often the path to licensing a new medical technology isn't clearly correlated with marketplace success. Just because Heath Canada approves something, in other words, doesn't mean hospitals or clinics will find it useful--or buy it.
Monique Albert, EXCITE's manager, says that companies are often surprised at the level of evidence they need to present in order to land sales of their products. Health Canada, she explains, explores the basic questions of product safety and efficacy, but doesn't consider other questions like the comparative cost or efficacy of a new treatment relative to others that are already available. Health Canada also doesn't examine the real-world implementation questions for new products--the precise questions that can determine whether a new product will be accepted clinically.
EXCITE works to bridge this gap by building those market-based questions into the process earlier on: it helps companies with medical devices in development collect the evidence they need on those matters while they are going through the basic licensing process, rather than only thinking of them after the fact.
"Innovators are often so focused on licensing," Albert says, "that they neglect this side of it."
MaRS is expected to do another "Call for Innovation" later this year.
Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Monique Albert, Manager, MaRS Excellence in Clinical Innovation and Technology Evaluation