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Kanata startup helps neurologists make strides in monitoring multiple sclerosis patients

August 24, 2023

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A Terry Matthews-backed startup is hoping its AI-powered software that helps monitor the progression of multiple sclerosis by tracking changes in a patient’s gait will mark a major step forward in the treatment of the disease. Founded two years ago, Celestra Health Systems is recruiting patients for Phase II trials of its platform at The Ottawa Hospital, Harvard University and Barts Health NHS Trust, a network of hospitals in London. The Kanata-based company was officially spun out of Matthews’ venture capital firm, Wesley Clover International, in May after developing and testing its software for the past two years. Celestra’s artificial intelligence platform analyzes nearly two dozen metrics related to how multiple sclerosis patients walk, including their stride length and the amount of time both feet are on the ground. Sensors embedded in the insoles of a patient’s shoes collect data such as walking speed, direction and foot pressure, to come up with a “gait signature.” The information is fed into cloud-based AI software, which uses dozens of algorithms to assess a patient’s mobility on a 100-point scale that can be updated in real time. Co-founder and CEO Bruce Ford explains that changes in a person’s gait are expected to be highly reliable indicators of whether a multiple sclerosis patient’s condition is improving or worsening. “If you ask an MS patient what their No. 1 quality of life factor is … they always rank walking and movement as the No. 1 factor, even above fatigue and brain fog,” says Ford, an electrical engineer who began his career at Nortel in the late 1980s and most recently spent nearly a decade in senior product and business development roles at communications software firm CounterPath. MS is a chronic disorder that affects the central nervous system, damaging the protective lining around nerve fibres and disrupting the brain’s ability to send signals to the rest of the body. Its symptoms range from muscle weakness that affects mobility, to impaired vision and bladder function. The disease afflicts 2.5 million people worldwide – including one in 400 Canadians, the highest rate of any country. Yet while the disease is widespread, Ford says the way it is monitored is stuck in the past. In most cases, he explains, neurologists check in with MS patients once or twice a year. They are typically timed as they walk a distance of 25 feet, and those measurements are tracked to help determine whether their mobility is improving or declining. “It’s crude and very flawed, especially given the importance of walking as an indicator of progression,” says Ford, who first began thinking about a different approach a few years ago while discussing MS with his wife, Dr. Heather MacLean, a neurologist at The Ottawa Hospital who specializes in treating the disease. “I just started asking questions about work,” he says. “The more questions I asked, the more I was surprised just how primitive some of their assessments are. It became pretty apparent that there was a big opportunity. That’s sort of what got the whole ball rolling.” With financial backing from Wesley Clover, Ford and his team of researchers worked with partners such as Ryan Graham, a biomechanics professor at the University of Ottawa, to study the gait of patients with MS and compare them with people who don’t have the disease. Researchers used high-speed photography to create computer-generated models to help analyze the differences in mobility between MS and non-MS subjects. They looked at about 200 different data points at uOttawa’s state-of-the-art human kinetics lab before whittling the number monitored by the software down to 22. Ford says the company’s tests show that Celestra’s “gait lab in a shoe” produces results virtually as accurate as those generated by the university’s multimillion-dollar facility. With MS drug costs now running as high as $40 billion a year in the U.S. alone, Ford says the software will be a valuable tool to help determine if patients are on the right treatment plans. “This will tell you if your drug is working,” Ford explains. “Imagine you’re an insurer and you’re paying for this drug and you don’t really know if it’s working, or how it’s working – or whether it’s the right drug. We can see all sorts of really subtle changes that there’s no way even a trained human observer would be able to see.” In addition, he says the software could provide physiotherapists and other support workers with valuable data to help tailor strength and balance exercises to patients’ individual needs. Celestra Health hopes to start selling the software to pharmaceutical companies for use in clinical trials by the end of next year. Pending regulatory approval, the company aims to start marketing its platform to rehabilitation clinics and other health-care facilities on a subscription basis by 2025, with a projected monthly fee of US$175. Ford pegs the estimated market for the MS-monitoring technology at up to US$100 million annually. But he sees much wider applications for the software down the road. For example, Celestra is already looking at testing the platform on patients with other central nervous disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, which afflicts more than six million people globally. Meanwhile, the company, which now has five full-time employees and about 15 part-time staffers, has applied to patent its technology and is looking to stake its claim as a rising star in the field of health-care-targeted AI. “Canada is a bit of a laggard when it comes to commercializing research from our universities,” Ford says. “This is a really shiny example of a great partnership with the University of Ottawa. It’s still early days for us, but we’re feeling pretty good.”