IRIS R&D Group Welcomes M.P.P. Effie Triantafilopoulos and Burlington’s Mayor, Marianne Meed Ward to Showcase Cutting Edge Technology Being Developed in Burlington
This article first appeared on irisradgroup.com.
Burlington, November 30, 2020 – IRIS R&D Group Inc. (IRIS), a smart-cities intelligent hardware and data platform provider hosted M.P.P., Ms. Effie Triantafilopoulos, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Long-Term Care and Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, to showcase their leading-edge technologies helping to combat COVID-19 in Burlington.
“IRIS R&D is a great Burlington company which is developing new and exciting technological solutions that look to make a significant difference in the medical field and others. They are an example of the kind of Ontario-made businesses that will help lead the province back to jobs and prosperity.”
Ms. Effie Triantafilopoulos, M.P.P., Oakville North, Burlington
IRIS R&D spoke to their journey during COVID-19 as a new Burlington business. Citing entrepreneurial resilience, TechPlace’s community-centric support and local industry collaboration as the drivers that led to a technological breakthrough during the height of the pandemic. During the meeting IRIS R&D demonstrated three of their technologies including their remote-based Cardiorespiratory Monitoring Solution, irisGO™ Early Warning Occupancy Detection solution currently deployed at TechPlace, and irisCITY™, the company’s cloud-based data platform.
irisGO™ is an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled occupancy detection solution currently deployed at TechPlace, a one-stop destination for new and growing technology companies led by Burlington Economic Development. TechPlace remained open to essential workers with the help of IRIS’s AI technology and continued to support new and growing technology companies in its 8,600-square-foot facility. The live demonstration showed how notifications of clustering is sent without any private information collected – people are redacted from images at source thus ensuring there is never any picture of people collected.
“We are thrilled to have IRIS R&D located in Burlington. Their innovative technologies are helping to support organizations, like TechPlace, adapt to COVID-19 guidelines and stay open so people can continue working safely. We look forward to seeing IRIS working alongside our leaders in the medical field to bring their new technology to those who need it the most.”
Her Worship Marianne Meed Ward, Mayor of Burlington
Their remote-based Cardiorespiratory Monitoring Solution is cutting-edge, industry-leading technology being built right here in Burlington. This technology remotely monitors patients’ heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen level and temperature, enabling municipalities, first responders and hospitals, like those with newly purchased hospital beds, to monitor patients remotely or even transform any space to a makeshift continuous monitoring ward during outbreaks. The technology is designed to capture cardiorespiratory data from patients without any physical contact or physically deployed sensors. Utilizing IRIS’ AI neural networks, built with computer vision machine learning technologies, this solution will ease the amount of contact required with patients and allow for more flexible patient monitoring. Not only does this increase safety for both the patient and the clinician, but the complete lack of any physical contact between the patient and the screening equipment allows for safe, rapid processing of a series of potential patients without a risk of cross-contamination between people being measured. IRIS is working with St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH) and the University of Guelph to implement this new technology.
“A tool of this form will improve screening and assessment not only in healthcare triage and screening situations, but also open the door to monitoring in ICU settings, care homes, transportation hubs and other key locations. This exciting project will really set a standard for this type of remote monitoring and its ability to be used in a diversity of settings and patient demographics.”
Dr. Andrew Hamilton-Wright, University of Guelph
This project is aimed to produce a production-ready solution within the coming year. The solution will be able to produce not only a product of great clinical value to Canadians and the world, but also advance the understanding of how to visually measure metabolic markers across gender, skin type ethnicity and other confounders – while developing an AI tool free of racial bias. This new product will augment IRIS’s human-centric AI technologies, and is placed to become a mainstay in IRIS’ technology suite, joining the company’s other vision-based, real-time decision-making tools.
”St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton is thrilled to be involved in the healthcare implementation and evaluation of IRIS technologies. IRIS’ computer vision machine learning technologies will facilitate rapid and contactless assessment of key patient vital signs. When aligned with machine learning tools and telemedicine initiatives being implemented at St. Joe’s, IRIS’ technologies have the potential to facilitate screening, enable earlier detection of patients whose conditions deteriorate, decrease the time healthcare workers take to obtain vital signs, minimize exposure to communicable diseases such as COVID-19, and even allow patients to remain in their homes while sending important heart and lung information to their care team. As institutions across Ontario and Canada embrace the explosive growth of telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, IRIS offers a unique solution for continuous and touchless remote patient monitoring. Not only will the safety of both patients and frontline workers be improved, but this technology has the potential to expand the reach of healthcare expertise beyond the walls of a hospital.”
Dr. Dan Perri BScPhm, MD, FRCPC
Chief Medical Information Officer – SJHH
Market interest of this solution is very high. Dr. Dan Perri, Chief Medical Information Officer at SJHH, is excited to implement and evaluate the solution against the needs of patients in a variety of settings within the hospital and its ambulatory clinics. This SJHH experience will be an extremely good indicator of the value to healthcare institutions across Canada and around the world. This works hand-in-hand with IRIS’s success to date in deploying other solutions, with a market-ready focus and customer-centric philosophy that drives their technology development.
About IRIS R&D Group (www.irisradgroup.com)
The Company enables smart cities to leverage innovation, next generation technology towards solving mobility, public safety and infrastructure challenges. The company’s ”irisGO™” solution is an innovative IoT device with computer vision/AI that changes the way cities gather and use data; driving efficiencies and savings across multiple divisions in Canadian municipalities.
About SJHH
St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH) is a leading research and academic health science centre affiliated with the world-renowned McMaster University, and located in the heart of Hamilton, Ont. It is a pioneer of the Integrated Comprehensive Care model, a leader in patient-centred care, and a major provider of mental health and addiction services, respiratory care and kidney care, in addition to other acute care, surgical and outpatient services at its three distinct sites. SJHH is a member of the St. Joseph’s Health System, working in close partnership with St. Joseph’s Villa Dundas for long-term care, and St. Joseph’s Home Care.
About TechPlace
TechPlace is a one-stop destination for new and growing technology companies. With the support of partners from across the public and private sectors, it is dedicated to connecting, developing, and advancing entrepreneurs at all stages. This means providing access to space, programming, mentorship, networking, and resources that are fundamental to growing a business in today’s technology-driven marketplace. Led by Burlington Economic Development, TechPlace exists to help technology, talent and ideas come together under one roof to create and promote opportunities for economic growth.
About Burlington Economic Development
Burlington Economic Development has a mandate to enhance the growth prospects of existing companies and bring new high-value firms to the community. Burlington Economic Development’s focus is on growing the economic base to sustain Burlington’s competitive and prosperous community. Burlington Economic Development is the first point of contact for companies looking to expand, start-up or locate in Burlington.
About Haltech
Haltech is a not for profit Regional Innovation Centre funded by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development Job Creation and Trade. Haltech provides entrepreneurial education, advisory services and strategic connections to technology start up and scale up companies in Halton Region to help them accelerate growth and bring innovations to market. Since its inception, Haltech has worked with over 800 technology and innovation companies. In its last fiscal year, clients of Haltech generated over $63 million dollars of revenue, created 428 jobs, and raised $21.5m in capital.
Media contact: Brian Keaney, Head of Growth at IRIS R&D, briank@irisradgroup.com