TORONTO – Soundbite Medical Solutions Inc. has received Health Canada approval for a shock wave device that jackhammers its way through calcified, chronic total occlusions (CTO) in life-threatening critical limb ischemia (CLI), a severe form of peripheral artery disease. This comes after the Active Wire 0.014” was used for the first time in late January to successfully treat five patients.

TORONTO – Kardium Inc. has secured US$115 million in private money to accelerate commercial growth in Europe of a mapping and ablation system for atrial fibrillation (AF), and conduct a clinical study for FDA approval of the system. Led by Fidelity Management & Research Co. LLC, this funding tranche follows a US$40 million investment in Kardium in 2018 driven by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., which also invested this time around.

TORONTO – Startup CEOs may sometimes be forgiven a little exuberance on learning their technology has received the high sign from regulatory officials. So it was when the head of Monitio Intelligence Inc. Ben Su sifted through his email at his office in Coburg Ontario and saw the Health Canada logo at the top of the letter. “I was actually jumping up and down when I received that authorization letter. I was very excited,” Su said. Since then Su has been overseeing installation of an automated COVID-19 screening system.

TORONTO – Calgary-based Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc. is receiving CA$2.65 million (US$2.09 million) in funding from the Canadian government’s Western Diversification Program (WDP), which represents nearly half of the more than CA$5.5 million (US$3.35 million) investment made to four Alberta-based organizations and companies. Company CEO Greg Ogrodnick attributes this to Circle Cardiovascular’s position “as the world leader in cardiovascular imaging.”

TORONTO – Pointclickcare Technologies Inc. has followed up a series of private sector investments and purchases with its acquisition of Collective Medical Inc. and its real‐time notification platform for streamlining transitions from one stage of health care to another and reducing unnecessary length of stay and patient admissions. One of this country’s largest software companies, Pointclickcare said the US$500 million plus acquisition will pair its “rich, post‐acute data set” with Collective Medical’s network of more than 1,300 hospitals and other health care organizations across 39 states.

TORONTO – The 2-French Electrophysiology Catheter (2F) had its Canadian launch in mid-December at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre where electrophysiologist Benedict Glover used it to map the small, tortuous branches of the coronary sinus in a patient suffering from cardiac arrhythmia. Developed by Toronto-based Baylis Medical Inc., the 2F is expected to work in tandem with the company’s larger 6F catheter to help diagnose comparatively rare but complex heart arrhythmias.

TORONTO – Scan the literature on mental health technologies, and you’ll find treatment apps for everything from depression to addiction. What you won’t find, said Claude Hariton, vice president and chief scientific officer at Quebec City-based Diamentis Inc., are tools to diagnose mental diseases. It’s a gap the company hopes to fill with Retinal Signal Processing and Analysis (RSPA), a tool just accepted into the U.S. FDA’s breakthrough devices program that diagnoses mental diseases from retinal signals in the eye.

Two-Photon Research Inc. (TPR) has launched a diagnostics platform it said improves coronavirus detection via aptamers, small molecules that change shape when binding to a protein at the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 molecule that causes COVID-19. Light shone onto a vial containing a patient’s saliva and the Aptamer Molecular Photonic Beacon (AMPB) generates negative or positive results that are instantly displayed on a smartphone and stored for planning purposes by public health officials.

TORONTO – It took the Vancouver, British Columbia-based biotech three times, but before the week in mid-December was over, Abcellera Biologics Inc. had finally closed its IPO on the Nasdaq, hoovering up gross proceeds of $555.5 million.

TORONTO – Waterloo, Ontario-based health startup Kenota Inc. has raised $9 million in series A funding to develop an in-clinic allergy test that takes less than 30 minutes and requires only a few drops of blood from a mild finger prick. This brings the total investment to $11 million for a point-of-care system that detects antibodies signaling allergies to egg, milk and peanuts and that will eventually search out environmental allergies to bee stings and shellfish.