Sunnybrook Medventions: Four Innovators to Watch
Housed within Sunnybrook Research Institute is a start-up incubator like no other. Fostering innovation that bridges engineering, research and clinical care, the Medventions program is an immersive, hospital-based fellowship that brings together teams of clinicians, engineers and life sciences graduates. The program focuses on taking real-world medical problems, finding solutions and translating them into novel medical technologies.
“Medventions is a talent engine,” says Dr. Ahmed Nasef, co-founder and program manager of Medventions. “It's a boot camp where we empower people to turn bright ideas into real world impact.”
Since 2016, the program has mentored and launched the careers of more than 150 innovators within the medical technology space who are at the forefront of solving for some of the most pressing needs in health care.
With expertise ranging from bedside and clinical care to engineering and research, these are some of the next innovators to watch:
Abigail Cave and Katherine Barron: Improving patient workflows at critical moments
Together in the same fellowship cohort, Abigail and Katherine came to Medventions at entirely different stages of their careers. Katherine is an established clinician with nearly two decades of bedside experience in respiratory therapy and anesthesia. Abigail, meanwhile, is wrapping up a Master’s degree in biomedical engineering from University of Toronto. They’re currently working with a multidisciplinary fellowship team assigned to the Schulich Heart Program at Sunnybrook to solve a workflow problem common in the field of cardiology.
“Our team is equipped to be able to tackle this solution because of how well our skillsets fit together,” Abigail says.
While it’s too early to disclose details about their project, Katherine explains, what she can say is, “We’re creating a workflow solution for very time-sensitive, critical events that occur every day at Sunnybrook. We’re designing a product to improve those workflows and give clinicians the tools to serve patients when every second counts.”
Ali Yassine: Real-world issues with real impact
While completing an internship at an outside medtech company, Ali Yassine realized he wanted to explore the earlier stages of innovations, like how ideas are born and shaped. Drawn to both the science and business side of problem-solving in health care, he sought out exposure to clinical environments and clinician feedback.
“Medventions offered exactly that,” Ali says. “Hands-on, clinical immersion and the opportunity to understand unmet medical needs from the source.”
A research engineer and physicist in the Sunnybrook Research Institute, Ali says that Medventions helped him bridge the gap between technical development and clinical relevance.
“It sharpened my ability to think critically about real-world applications and highlighted the importance of involving clinicians early in the innovation process. Additionally, it introduced me to intellectual property strategies and taught me how innovative ideas can be protected and monetized.”
Since completing the Medventions program in 2023, Ali is still actively working with Dr. Brian Courtney, interventional cardiologist and clinician-scientist in the Schulich Heart Program, as well as co-founder and director of Medventions, on the problem his group identified: using technology to prevent kidney injury that can occur with exposure to medical imaging contrast agents after catheterization laboratory procedures.
“It’s a real-world issue with high impact potential, and we’re exploring how smart technology can help reduce patient risk.”
Dr. Joel Moktar: Solving for system-wide innovation
During his surgical residency in orthopaedics, Dr. Moktar was interested in taking an outside view to problem-solving in health care within a field that sometimes has trouble thinking “outside the box,” he says.
During his Medventions fellowship in 2017, he was part of a group solving for different problems in surgery, including improving the methods surgeons use to see and understand 3D anatomy during knee arthroscopy, and improving the speed and ease of realigning femur fractures during critical orthopaedic surgeries.
“Medventions gave me an innovators eye and an inventor’s skillset,” Dr. Moktar says. “I've used these skills to help quickly identify problems in the real clinical world and have launched a few separate businesses.”
These businesses include LinkedHealth, which allows patients in Ontario to be seen virtually by specialists and QuickChart, an AI-enabled charting system for physicians to create medical reports.
For other budding innovators, Dr. Moktar says, “Keep an open mind and move out of your comfort zone. Have patience, build relationships and stay persistent.”
