TORONTO – Scan the literature on mental health technologies, and you’ll find treatment apps for everything from depression to addiction. What you won’t find, said Claude Hariton, vice president and chief scientific officer at Quebec City-based Diamentis Inc., are tools to diagnose mental diseases. It’s a gap the company hopes to fill with Retinal Signal Processing and Analysis (RSPA), a tool just accepted into the U.S. FDA’s breakthrough devices program that diagnoses mental diseases from retinal signals in the eye.

Two-Photon Research Inc. (TPR) has launched a diagnostics platform it said improves coronavirus detection via aptamers, small molecules that change shape when binding to a protein at the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 molecule that causes COVID-19. Light shone onto a vial containing a patient’s saliva and the Aptamer Molecular Photonic Beacon (AMPB) generates negative or positive results that are instantly displayed on a smartphone and stored for planning purposes by public health officials.

TORONTO – It took the Vancouver, British Columbia-based biotech three times, but before the week in mid-December was over, Abcellera Biologics Inc. had finally closed its IPO on the Nasdaq, hoovering up gross proceeds of $555.5 million.

TORONTO – Waterloo, Ontario-based health startup Kenota Inc. has raised $9 million in series A funding to develop an in-clinic allergy test that takes less than 30 minutes and requires only a few drops of blood from a mild finger prick. This brings the total investment to $11 million for a point-of-care system that detects antibodies signaling allergies to egg, milk and peanuts and that will eventually search out environmental allergies to bee stings and shellfish.

TORONTO – An airway clearance device that uses acoustic sound waves to treat lung disorders and respiratory infections like cystic fibrosis (CF) is now being used to clear the lungs of patients suffering very badly from COVID-19. Developed by Montreal-based Dymedso Inc., more than 675 Frequencer acoustic devices currently being utilized across the world are assisting COVID-19 patients by removing mucous and secretions from their lungs and smaller airways.

TORONTO – The Medipines AGM100, which was developed by Orange County, Calif.-based Medipines Corp. to detect respiratory impairment caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), has been recruited in the fight against COVID-19 in Canada. Described by company CEO and coinventor Steve Lee as “the world's first noninvasive lung monitor for gas exchange measurement,” the device is undergoing advanced testing.

TORONTO – Waterloo, Ontario-based DarwinAI Corp. and Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat Inc.are developing a suite of deep neural networks for COVID-19 detection and risk stratification via chest radiography in cooperation with Boston Children’s Hospital. DarwinAI designed COVID-Net as “explainable” artificial intelligence (AI) that illuminates the inner workings of AI-driven medical technologies and promptly offered it on an open-source platform for the broader hospital community.

TORONTO – Ontario and British Columbia med-tech companies have received CA$1.4 million (US$1 million) from Ottawa’s Supercluster fund, making a difference they said for patients suffering the long-range effects of COVID-19, chronic disease and undergoing joint replacement surgery.

TORONTO – The Fionet Rapid Response Group formed by Toronto’s Fio Corp. and Relay Medical Corp. has received COVID-19 lateral flow rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) from the European division of Abbott Laboratories Inc., Switzerland’s Roche Diagnostics AG and North York, Ontario’s Proprietary Innovation Labs Inc. for operation with its mobile testing and tracking platform.