Insider Only Techopia

Off the cuff: Kanata startup’s smart wristband tracks blood pressure, other vital signs

January 22, 2024

The wristband is the brainchild of researchers at Healthsign, a company founded by Ottawa entrepreneur Atul Garg that has spent the past four years developing the technology.

Already an Insider? Log in

Get Instant Access to This Article

Become an Ottawa Business Journal Insider and get immediate access to all of our Insider-only content and much more.

Learn More and Become an Insider

With the Canadian health-care system straining under the weight of an aging population, an Ottawa startup says it is seeking regulatory approval for a wearable device that can measure vital signs such as blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature with medical-grade accuracy – a breakthrough it says will make health-care workers more efficient and save hospitals millions of dollars annually. The wristband is the brainchild of researchers at Healthsign, a company founded by Ottawa entrepreneur Atul Garg that has spent the past four years developing the technology. The device uses cutting-edge optical sensors and proprietary algorithms to track a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, temperature and blood oxygen levels without the need for equipment such as stethoscopes, arm cuffs and calibration machines. The smart wristband can be programmed to continuously keep track of a wearer’s vital signs or measure them at specific intervals – say, every 15 minutes – as required. Data can be streamed to mobile devices, stored in the cloud and shared with medical professionals. The portable monitoring technology can also alert health-care workers immediately if a patient's blood pressure spikes or it detects other irregularities. Tim Skelly, the company’s vice-president of business development, says the devices could ultimately produce huge savings for the cash-strapped health-care system by reducing the amount of time caregivers need to devote to strapping on blood-pressure cuffs and listening to stethoscopes. “The process of how you care for people really hasn’t changed much in a couple of decades,” he explains. “We quickly realized that this is going to save a ton of dollars. You’re not going to take dollars out, but you’re going to give that time back to health-care professionals to do other, more important work.” Skelly says clinical tests show that the product's measurements are almost as accurate as readings from traditional equipment. While there are other wearable devices currently on the market that track heart rates and other metrics, he says none of them provide readings with the level of precision required by health-care workers. The Kanata-based company expects to have the final prototype of the battery-operated device, which takes about an hour to recharge, ready for another round of clinical trials within the next three months. Then, it must await the green light from regulators at Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market the wristband as a medical device, a process that typically takes from nine months to a year to complete. If all goes according to schedule, Skelly says, the Healthsign Smart Wristband could be approved for commercial use by the end of 2024. As the Canadian health-care system grapples with rising emergency-room wait times, worker burnout and a growing shortage of family doctors, he says the company expects to see brisk demand for the technology – not only from hospitals, care homes and other medical institutions but from individual consumers. “This device, I think, will have a huge impact on health-care systems globally,” he adds. The startup unveiled the latest version of the product, dubbed the Healthsign Smart Wristband, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month. Skelly says inquiries have been flooding in from hospitals, universities and other institutions eager to find out more about the device, adding “a number of very large tech companies” have made overtures about acquiring the fledgling firm’s patents and other IP. Garg, the founder of Access Healthcare Services, launched the company after concluding there had to be a better way to monitor patients at his Nepean-based organization that provides in-home nursing, palliative care and other medical services to clients in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario. Skelly wouldn’t disclose exactly how much money the bootstrapped enterprise has spent on the high-tech wristband, saying only that Garg has invested a “significant” sum in its research and development. “Usually, you would bring in angel investors and do a series-A ramp-up for something this significant within the health-care system,” he explains. “We’re all pretty grateful for Atul and his dedication to see this thing through and get this to market.”