TORONTO – Health Canada has green-lighted an all-in-one virtual reality (VR) platform for use in diagnostic radiology. Software developer Luxsonic Technologies Inc. said the award of a class II medical device license to its mobile Sievrt suite of diagnostic tools is the first time a VR system of this kind has been approved by a national regulatory agency.

TORONTO – A “silent epidemic” all but “ignored” by medical technology developers. That’s how Carlo Perez, founder and CEO of Swift Medical Inc., described the hesitancy of the industry to directly tackle chronic wound care through development of more advanced medical imaging and diagnostic systems. Undaunted, U.S. and Canadian investors have raised $35 million in series B funding to advance development and uptake of Swift Medical’s own AI-powered, digital wound care platform.

TORONTO – What do ER doctors want most for their patients? Never to return to the ER, said Giovanni Ferrara, a professor at Edmonton’s University of Alberta Hospital's Division of Pulmonary Medicine. Ferrara is heading a feasibility project to see if a wearable device developed by Rochester, N.Y.-based Heath Care Originals Inc. can predict with scientific certainty when the condition of a patient with lung disease is worsening and requires another visit to the hospital.

Responding to the growing number of state-sponsored cyber threats to health care and other key sectors and to the compromise of the Microsoft Exchange Server, which was disclosed in March, Canada, the EU, U.K., U.S. and other NATO allies issued statements July 19 laying out expectations and markers for how responsible nations behave in cyberspace and specifically calling out China’s “malicious cyber activity.”

TORONTO – Spino Modulation Inc., a subsidiary of Montreal-based med-tech company Spinologics Inc., has received breakthrough device designation for a vertebral body tethering (VBT) device to treat adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, one of three types of scoliosis that cause the spine to develop an abnormal curve.

Steven Roy, CEO of Convergence Medical Sciences Inc., has designed a low-cost device that boosts the number of patients on a single ventilator to four simultaneously. To do this, he is collaborating with Calgary-based consulting engineers, Exergy Solutions Inc., to take the international Red Dot design winner through the Health Canada approval process.

TORONTO – Health Canada has proposed a single regulatory framework for medical device and drug clinical trials after broad industry consultation and a hard line drawn by the COVID-19 pandemic for a more streamlined system.

Adela snapped up $60 million in a series A financing round to commercialize its blood test for cancer detection and disease monitoring. At the same time, the company announced its name change from Dnamx Inc. The Adela system profiles all methylated DNA fragments in a blood sample, allowing it to determine the tissue of origin early in development of a malignancy and potentially simplifying screening across all cancer types.