Past Winner
2016 NSERC Synergy Awards for Innovation

The proliferation of mobile devices around the world is shrinking the gap between patients and hospitals, making health care more accessible and affordable. Medical professionals today can connect with patients and labs with unprecedented ease, even in the most remote regions, and a Canadian innovation is putting powerful diagnostic tools at their fingertips.

Guy Dumont of The University of British Columbia and Lionsgate Technologies partnered to develop the Kenek O2, a small, easy-to-use diagnostic tool that connects to the audio port on your mobile device. Patients clip a sensor onto their finger and an app on the phone tests for signs of easily preventable diseases such as pneumonia, sepsis and pre-eclampsia. Currently, the sensor, a pulse oximeter, measures blood oxygen saturation and heart rate, but Dumont and Lionsgate Technologies have plans to improve their device to measure multiple vital signs including respiration, and—through the use of additional sensors—blood pressure and body temperature, greatly expanding the range of ailments it can diagnose.

The Kenek O2 has already been approved by Health Canada, and now Dumont and Lionsgate Technologies are bringing their mobile health innovation to the world. They are establishing partnerships in Africa, China and India, as the Kenek O2 will be particularly useful in remote and developing regions where access to hospitals is limited.

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