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Federal Government Awards $49M to Terry Fox Research Institute and Imagia led Consortium to Accelerate Medical BreakthroughsJoint project aims to unlock data-driven discoveries in cancer and other diseases to unleash the full potential of personalized healthcare MONTRÉAL, May 24, 2019 /CNW/ - The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, announced an investment of up to $49M from the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) as part of the Stream 4 - Health and Biosciences competition. This award, together with $108M in-cash and $165M in-kind contributions from 97 consortium partners, supports a Digital Health and Discovery Platform (DHDP) that will combine Canadian expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and precision medicine to improve healthcare for Canadians. The joint endeavour will catalyze collaborations with industry to stimulate commercialization of home-grown research discoveries. Announced at Imagia headquarters yesterday in Montreal, Minister Bains said the recipients of the innovation grant will establish a cutting-edge, national digital health data initiative. According to the Office of Innovation, Science and Economic Development in Canada, "Through this new platform, researchers and doctors will work to accelerate the development of new and personalized treatments to help to find cures for diseases that affect Canadians. While the platform will initially focus on cancer, the plan is to expand to other areas of medicine in the future." The full government release can be found here. The hope for conquering complex diseases such as cancer is in the intelligent use of digital information. The new Digital Health and Discover Platform will greatly empower the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres network, launched by the Terry Fox Research Institute on April 12 in St John's, Newfoundland on the 39th anniversary of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope tocure cancer. For the first time, cancer centres and research institutes across the country are joining forces from coast to coast to coast to advance a world-leading, precision medicine cancer plan, a roadmap to cure cancer, to benefit all Canadians. The platform will provide world-leading infrastructure and an innovation framework that will enable collaborations and the sharing of data insights, knowledge and resources with partners across the country to accelerate precision medicine. The four-year project will leverage Imagia's EVIDENS AI discovery platform and clinical collaboration ecosystem. EVIDENS enables federated learning on patient data across multiple hospitals and unites creative minds in both AI and healthcare to power discovery at scale. The platform empowers clinical researchers from different pan-Canadian institutions to derive outcome-based insights from real-world evidence (RWE) and collaborate on AI biomarkers and clinical decision support systems. Imagia's unique healthcare AI ecosystem gives hospitals, medical device makers, pharmaceutical companies, and diagnostics manufacturers the opportunity to benefit from a vast AI clinical solutions innovation pipeline to develop breakthrough advances in personalized healthcare. Quote from the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development: Quote from Alexandre Le Bouthillier, Imagia Co-founder & Chief Corporate Officer: Quote from Dr. Victor Ling, O.C., O.B.C., TFRI President and Scientific Director: Imagia The Terry Fox Research Institute SOURCE Terry Fox Research Institute |