“As product designers, we have to fall in love with the problem instead of the solution,” says Jonathan Kochis, head of Research and Design at the London, Ontario based firm Res.im. “Focus on the solution, and you end up with a narrow view, possibly missing something crucial.” Res.im has partnered with CANet to design front-end elements of the VIRTUES Clinical Platform – CANet’s user-driven clinical application that will transform how patients and clinicians manage arrhythmia. VIRTUES will give doctors and patients the most up-to-date medical records at a moment’s notice. It will empower patients and caregivers to be active partners in the management of their health. Kochis highlights the growing demand by consumers to have everything that they might need at their fingertips, accessible via phone. Healthcare organizations must move away from traditional ideas of healthcare access, and meet these expectations. “VIRTUES is meeting that consumer demand,” Kochis says. “It is smart and necessary.” CANet has also partnered with multiple companies across Canada to leverage world-class expertise in developing cutting-edge healthcare which also helps foster economic growth. These collaborations will help CANet come closer to its strategic goal of significantly improving the efficiency, effectiveness, and accessibility of arrhythmia care delivery...

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, you may be thinking of filling your heart with people you love, but February is also a month to think about your heart health. It’s Heart Month across the country, and with about 2.4 million Canadian adults affected by heart disease, Canadians are encouraged to learn about their individual risk factors and to make one change to improve their heart health. “Everyone one of us in North American and in Canada is at some risk of developing heart disease,” said Dr. Anthony Tang, CEO and scientific director of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet). “For some, the risk is higher, and some of that has to do with how you live your life.” “If you live a healthy life — you eat well, you exercise regularly, you don’t smoke — if you do all those things you [can reduce your risk].” While living a healthy lifestyle can help, Tang said biology can also play a role in your chances of developing heart disease. According to Tang, London leads Canada and the world in heart disease research. Right now, he said, researchers are working to identify who is at a greater risk of developing...

London, ON, February 1, 2019 — Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet) leverages cutting-edge technology to empower its patients. Digital innovations like artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and consumer-grade wearables are now mainstream. Healthcare services must invest in these breakthroughs to deliver better medical care for Canadians. CANet is currently focusing on solutions – advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain technology – towards one simple strategic goal – significantly improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accessibility of arrhythmia care delivery in Canada. “We are staying ahead of the digital-health curve by bridging the gap between doctors, technologists, and patients,” says CANet Research Data and Systems Manager Dimitri Popolov. So far, that gap has been a key obstacle in developing advanced healthcare technology. CANet’s VIRTUES Clinical Platform – a user-driven clinical application – is transforming how CANet works with patients and clinicians to manage arrhythmia. It presents patients with their health data and includes them in the decision-making process aimed at improving health outcomes. Think of VIRTUES as precision medicine – a bundle of technology and medical breakthroughs wrapped in an online platform seamlessly and securely sharing valuable clinical data among wearable medical devices and databases, doctors and patients, all across...

Our network investigator Dr. V. Thiruganasambandamoorthy speaks with CTV Morning Live about catching life-threatening conditions after fainting. Watch video: https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1591577

Study reveals best ways to catch life-threatening conditions. For the first time, physicians in the Emergency Department (ED) have evidence-based recommendations on how best to catch the life-threatening conditions that make some people faint. New research published in Circulation suggests that low-risk patients can be safely sent home by a physician after spending two hours in the ED, and medium and high-risk patients can be sent home after six hours if no danger signals are detected. Most of the time fainting is harmless, but a small percentage of people faint due to serious medical conditions, such as an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia. These arrhythmias usually come and go quickly, and the person’s heart rhythm returns to normal by the time the ambulance arrives or they reach the ED. Fear of these arrhythmias coming back have led to patients being kept in the ED for eight to 12 hours. Approximately half of all patients who are hospitalized for fainting across Canada are admitted so their heart rhythm can be monitored. However, only a small proportion of patients will experience a dangerous irregular heartbeat, heart attack or death within a month of fainting. “Before this study we didn’t know which fainting patients...

Pam Husband has spent 23 tireless years giving a voice to patients and families affected by inherited cardiac rhythm disorders, which often lead to sudden cardiac death. She is the Executive Director of the Canadian Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndromes (SADS) Foundation, Canada’s only SADS-specific patient advocacy group. The registered Canadian charity works with patients and medical professionals to raise awareness about the warning signs of SADS. An estimated 700 children and young people die from a SADS condition each year in Canada – early diagnosis and proper treatment help patients lead productive lives. “CANet has been very helpful by including and inviting us to their meetings and conferences,” Husband says. As a patient-information group, SADS gets to talk to other physicians about SADS, and create opportunities to reach out to their patients. For years, the organization has brought patients and healthcare professionals closer together through their website, social media, and importantly, their SADS conferences, held across Canada, “It is critical to bring patient voices forward, understand their experiences, and improve their healthcare experience,” Husband says. In her eyes, patients are not only recipients of healthcare, but also its participants. Earlier, Husband explains, the physician was the expert, and the patient...

“The impact of sudden cardiac death is second only to all cancers in terms of life-years lost,” says CANet investigator and professor at University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Andrew Krahn. He, together with fellow CANet investigator and professor at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Robert Hamilton, is helping better diagnose and treat individuals and family members at-risk for sudden cardiac death by developing a more effective detection and prevention strategy. The strategy, according to them, is in the genes. The program focuses explicitly on channelopathies, and hypertrophic and arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies – all predominant causes of SCD in young adults and children. Each of these disorders is an inherited heart condition. “Our current system typically discovers barely ten per cent or less of these individuals,” Dr. Krahn says. Krahn and Hamilton have received funding with CANet’s Strategic Research Grant for their project “The Canadian Genetic Heart Rhythm Network: Innovative Strategies to Reduce the Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death Using Novel Clinical and Population Approaches” The Canadian Genetic Heart Rhythm Network is a collection of 15 centers – 12 adult and seven pediatric – across seven provinces in Canada. Patients will work with genetic counselors and cardiac...

“It bothers me when I cannot answer a question,” Dr. Paul Dorian says. A few years ago, a patient, having survived a sudden cardiac arrest asked Dorian if there were other survivors out there like him. Dorian didn’t know the answer. Now, the University of Toronto Medicine professor, along with a group of researchers – all part of the Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC) – has teamed up with CANet to search for answers. The Canadian Sudden Cardiac Arrest Network Registry (C-SCAN) will be the country’s first comprehensive database of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) cases. “We have no idea how many people in Canada get cardiac arrests,” Dorian says. “Is the number going up or down? How many survive? What’s their average age? Does it affect more men or women? We simply don’t know.” CANet’s role will go beyond tallying numbers and the details of age and sex. “With CANet’s help, we will have an idea of patients’ health conditions before and after they suffered from SCA,” Dorian says. He and his team will get to know the patient’s medical history; what happened in the minutes, hours, and days leading up to a SCA? Did they, for example, have a...

Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) happens when the heart unexpectedly stops working. SCD is usually caused by an abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia). When a person experiences SCD, he or she collapses, is unresponsive to touch or sound and usually stops breathing. SCD victims will die if they don’t receive emergency medical help. An Automated External Defibrillator (AED) must be used to restart the heart. Up to 40,000 cardiac arrests happen in Canada each year. Your heart has a natural pacemaker, called the sinus node, which creates electrical impulses that cause your heart to beat. When there is a disorder in this electrical system, an arrhythmia may occur. Click here to view ‘On Track: Sudden Cardiac Death’

On December 6, 2018, Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan announced that the funding for the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program would be gradually transferred to the New Frontiers in Research Fund over the next several years. The Fund, valued at $275 million over five years and $65 million per year after that, will focus on exploratory, multidisciplinary and international research and will be open to researchers and networks of researchers across all disciplines. Currently-funded networks including ours will continue to be funded until the end date of their grant. The NCE has invited us to apply for a final three-year grant which will begin after the end of our five-year term. Built upon a strong foundation of on-going successes in our community, CANet is poised to be competitive in this renewal application. What this means to our research community is that our current CANet-funded projects will continue and our renewal grant funding opportunities is active, with extended application deadlines. With our impacts and successes, we have become a well-recognized organization, and we are well-positioned to continue our growth and be self-sustained. Recently, we have been chosen to advance to the (full application) final stage for the Innovation, Science...