Celestra Health Systems specializes in AI-powered software that helps monitor the progression of neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease by tracking changes in a patient’s gait.
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Bruce Ford occupies a privileged position among Ottawa entrepreneurs: if he wants advice from the man who’s probably done more to build the capital’s tech ecosystem than anyone else, he only has to walk a few steps.
“Terry Matthews is just down the hall here,” the co-founder and chief executive of Celestra Health Systems says of the billionaire business magnate, who is also his biggest investor.
Based in Kanata at Matthews’ venture capital firm, Wesley Clover International, Celestra specializes in AI-powered software that helps monitor the progression of neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease by tracking changes in a patient’s gait.
Like virtually all biotech ventures, the company wouldn’t be where it is today if its CEO and his team of neuroscientists and software engineers hadn’t taken a bit of a leap of faith.
After testing its software for nearly two years, Celestra was officially spun out of Wesley Clover International in May 2023.
Now, the startup appears to be on the verge of a breakthrough.
Results from seven clinical trials in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany have been encouraging, Ford says, and last Friday he received the news he’s been anxiously awaiting for months – a letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granting Celestra’s platform Class II medical device certification, meaning the company can now sell its products to clinicians in the U.S. for prescription use.
It’s the culmination of millions of dollars’ worth of research, development and testing and more than 12 months of discussions with FDA officials.
“It feels to me like we really have some wind in our sails,” says Ford, who earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa and began his tech career at Nortel in the late 1980s.
“Now we’re at the point where we’re going into, say, a neurology practice and saying, ‘We want you to use our platform for six to eight weeks.’ That’s the goal, and we know that we’re going to learn a lot once we get into the actual clinical practice environment.”
Celestra’s software analyzes nearly two dozen metrics related to how patients with multiple sclerosis walk, including their stride length and the amount of time both feet are on the ground.
Sensors embedded in the insoles of a person’s shoes collect data such as walking speed, direction and foot pressure to come up with a “gait signature.” The information is fed into Celestra’s cloud-based AI platform, which uses dozens of algorithms to assess a patient’s mobility on a 100-point scale that can be updated in real time.
Ford explains that changes in gait are considered highly reliable indicators of whether a multiple sclerosis patient’s condition is improving or worsening. He says studies indicate Celestra’s technology can spot such differences months earlier than current methods of tracking the progression of MS, which typically involve neurologists checking in with patients once or twice a year and timing them as they walk a specific distance.
