Participated · Seed · May 2023

Swiftsure Innovations develops the SwishKit, a device that washes and suctions the oral cavity of mechanically ventilated patients using saline to reduce the risk of ventilator‑acquired pneumonia. The system is designed to clean nasal and oral cavities while minimizing secondary infection risk and improving patient comfort. The company completed its first clinical trials at the Cleveland Clinic last year and is beginning a second clinical study there. Swiftsure has received provincial funding and is committing internal capital to support the next trial as it works toward generating the clinical evidence required for commercial adoption. The company raised $2.3 million in equity funding in 2023. Management says the Cleveland Clinic studies will help validate clinical outcomes, decrease healthcare costs, and enhance patient comfort. Swiftsure Innovations develops and commercializes novel medical devices focused on providing oral-care solutions for critically ill and intubated patients. The company is led by CEO and founder Deanne McCarthy. It raised CAD2.3M in a seed funding round to support commercial activities. The proceeds will enable the company to commercialize SwishKit, an oral care solution for intubated patients. Investors in the round included Pelorus VC (lead), Sandpiper Ventures, the pan-Canadian consortium MEDTEQ+, and several other pre-seed investors. The company is based in Pasadena, Canada. Swiftsure Innovations develops a device for cleaning the mouths and throats of people on ventilators. The company is based in Pasadena, NL. It raised $1.05 million in an oversubscribed seed round. Backers included Threshold Impact, Killick Capital, Pluto Investments, Pelorus Venture Capital and Sandpiper Ventures. The article identifies Sandpiper Ventures as a female-focused venture capital firm.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2023

Eli builds a palm-sized at-home testing system that measures minuscule amounts of hormones in saliva to provide daily hormonal data. The product targets unmet needs across menopause, fertility, contraception, and endocrine conditions by enabling continuous, timely hormone monitoring. Eli’s scientific and engineering breakthroughs stem from years of R&D to make continuous saliva monitoring accurate and affordable for long-term home use. The company says users collect a tiny saliva sample, insert it into the reader, and receive results in minutes via an app. The new funding will let Eli finalize product development and advance through clinical validation and regulatory approvals toward commercial launch. Since launching in 2019, Eli has raised a total of CAD $9 million, including a CAD $1.9 million pre-seed in 2020. Eli develops a saliva-based at-home device and companion app that capture hormone fluctuations and provide daily, personalized information based on each user’s evolving hormonal profile. The company positions its product to help women own their fertility and broader health decisions. Led by CEO and co-founder Marina Pavlovic Rivas, Eli combines hardware and software with clinical and academic partnerships. The company plans to use new capital for product development, clinical validations with independent medical centers, and initial strategic sales. Eli will continue collaborating with academic institutions to advance women’s health research. Financially, the company raised a seed round that increases its total funding since creation in mid-2019.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2023

Arbutus Medical develops TrakPak®, a single-use, pre-sterile procedure kit for bedside skeletal traction in trauma center ERs, and distributes surgical drills using its patented DrillCover Technology. The DrillCover creates a sterile enclosure around DEWALT® power tools, converting them into disposable sterile surgical drills and reducing the need for between-case sterilization. The company says its products have regulatory clearances from the U.S. FDA and Health Canada and that its devices have been used in 40 countries, enabling an estimated 85,000 surgeries. Arbutus is ISO13485 certified and aims to expand TrakPak adoption to improve ER efficiency, reduce costs, and broaden access to safe surgical care. The financing announced will fund the launch of the next-generation TrakPak in 2023 and support rapid scale-up. Arbutus Drill Cover, based in Vancouver, BC, develops a sterile cover that turns a hardware-store drill into a surgical tool. The device is intended to enable the use of consumer drills in surgical procedures. Arbutus was one of six Canadian healthtech companies selected for investment by Grand Challenges Canada. Grand Challenges Canada invested $1 million in Arbutus as part of a $5 million package across the six companies. Grand Challenges Canada, funded by the Government of Canada, worked with the companies through its transition-to-scale program to facilitate connections with private partners and public resources to secure additional funding. After each company went through the transition-to-scale program, the total investment reached $10 million.

Led · Equity · Jul 2022

BIOS Health develops an AI-driven brain data and neural digital therapy platform that identifies neural biomarkers to connect nerve activity with specific illnesses. The company focuses on leveraging nervous-system data to create neural digital therapies and accelerate precision medicine for conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. BIOS positions its technology as a way to codify the "neural code" and enable a new generation of medicines and data-driven clinical trials. The firm says it will use the new funds and revenue growth to build market share. BIOS was founded in 2015 by Cambridge University researchers Emil Hewage and Oliver Armitage and its team spans neuroscience, machine learning, software, applied biomaterials, biotech and medicine. Earlier this year the NIH and institutions including the University of Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic, and Stanford chose BIOS’ technology to power the three-year, eight-clinic REVEAL programme, described by BIOS as the largest clinical investigation of human brain data to date. BIOS Health is developing an AI-controlled closed-loop neuromodulation system aimed at treating chronic cardiac conditions by linking neural and cardiac signals. The company collaborates with academic partners including Mila, McGill University and Université de Montréal, and works closely with researchers Dr. Blake Richards and Dr. Guillaume Lajoie. Its work focuses on using machine learning to decode neural‑to‑cardiac relationships and identify neural biomarkers that enable personalized, second-by-second modulation of cardiac function. The technology aims to preferentially modulate cardiac activity while reducing side effects on other organs, potentially replacing some pharmaceutical interventions. BIOS plans to advance the program toward human clinical trials, with the CEO stating the next stage will take the project up to the point of clinical testing. The company’s research programme began with a CA$800,000 partnership launched in 2020 and is being expanded through new, project-specific funding. BIOS is developing a core neural interface product and related AI that the company says can connect to organs and nerve systems across the body. Its first product, described as a “USB connector for the body,” enabled a Prosthetic Interface Device (PID) that lets amputees connect prostheses directly to the nervous system and is about to enter clinical trials. R&D has produced safer, more accurate hardware and yielded a large neural data set that BIOS uses to train its algorithms. The company plans to both build some products itself and partner with commercial and academic organisations, expanding access via tools, data sets and algorithms for discovering neural biomarkers. BIOS is originally based in Cambridge, U.K., and has opened an additional R&D office in Montreal, Canada. The startup will use the funding to double its technical team and further develop its core neural-interface technologies while helping push industry standards and formats for neural data.

Participated · Seed · Jul 2022

Haleo is a Montreal-based provider of a professional virtual sleep clinic delivered through a mobile application. Led by CEO Bradley Smith, the company enables licensed therapists to provide care using proprietary, clinically proven treatment protocols. Its treatments employ evidence-based techniques such as cognitive behavioural therapy and image rehearsal therapy. The company recently launched SW-CBTi, a protocol for shift workers that is designed and clinically proven effective for first responders, manufacturers, transporters, front-line healthcare professionals and other shift workers. Haleo intends to use new funds to accelerate research and development across treatment modalities such as digital therapeutics and in underserved clinical fields including nightmares, sleep optimization, and sleep medication management. Financially, Haleo completed a CAD$5.2M Seed-extension financing to support those plans.