Cerula’s platform uses patient stratification and clinical workflow automation to ensure timely and effective support. By embedding mental health care into the cancer treatment journey, Cerula significantly enhances patient outcomes and quality of life.
The Kento app, a proprietary AI-powered platform, offers personalized clinical exercise, nutrition and behavioural health plans, via expert clinical coaching and real-time continuous vitals monitoring. Its comprehensive heart disease management platform replaces or supplements traditional in-person care, and guides people through their recovery journey, all from the convenience of their home.
Lyteflo's emergence represents a significant advancement in addressing these market inefficiencies. Their comprehensive EV intelligence platform introduces sophisticated solutions to longstanding industry challenges.
Lyteflo Closes $3 Million Seed Round to Revolutionize Electric Vehicle Sales
Lyteflo, a new electric vehicle (EV) merchandising solution, today announced $3 million in Seed funding.
Planetary offers a scalable, natural alternative to engineered carbon removal solutions by enhancing the ocean’s existing ability to absorb CO2. The ocean already absorbs 31% of global CO2 emissions, and by adding alkalinity, Planetary increases this capacity while neutralizing ocean acidity. The process, called Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE), stores carbon as stable salts within the marine ecosystem for thousands of years, making it a low-energy, cost-effective, durable solution. Early tests in controlled environments confirm successful CO2 removal, and ongoing open-ocean trials show no measurable negative impact on marine habitats.
ThinkLabs AI is a specialized AI development and deployment company focused on advanced engineering systems. With their flagship product, ThinkLabs Copilot, using proprietary physics-informed AI digital twins, ThinkLabs AI is well positioned to transform the way grids operate, rich of clean data and predictive power.
Green Shield Acquires Inkblot Technologies, Canada's Fastest Growing Virtual Mental Health Platform
Amplify Capital invested in Inkblot Technologies in early 2019 as its first institutional investor. We joined the Board and continued to support the Company through to this acquisition. We’re excited to see Inkblot enter the next phase of growth in providing quality mental health therapy for all.
Read more about the acquisition in the source link.
TORONTO, August 27, 2020 /Betakit/ -- Toronto-based healthtech startup Verto Health has closed a $2 million CAD seed round led by MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (MaRS IAF).
The round also included financing from Verstra Ventures, Amplify Capital, and undisclosed strategic investors in digital health.
“COVID-19 has only accelerated digital transformation in healthcare.”
Verto aims to improve clinical workflow by connecting healthcare providers and patients. The startup’s platform uses “digital twin technology,” which creates virtual replicas of physical entities, like bodies or devices.
The company said it plans to use the new capital to grow its sales and marketing teams across North America, develop its products, and scale-up operational support “to address significantly increasing demand.” Verto told BetaKit investors have committed to providing additional support if required.
“Digital twin technology has been deployed in other industries to improve data sharing, interoperability and efficiency and I was confident that similar technology could be applied to the healthcare sector,” said Michael Millar, Verto Health’s founder and CEO.
Millar founded Verto Health in 2017, following 15 years spent working in healthcare information technology, during which he noticed healthcare organizations struggled with clinical workflow issues as they built out digital patient records, given that different providers use different systems.
Verto’s software integrates with existing hospital and laboratory information systems, electronic medical records (EMR), mobile app data, and various other devices. The company claims its platform makes patient care information easier and less costly to access, improving patient outcomes and experiences.
The startup aims to address interoperability (the ability of systems to exchange and make use of information) and care coordination, without the use of “expensive or disruptive” EMR upgrades. According to Verto, its platform is currently used by over 50 hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities across North America, and has served over 120,000 patients.
“What piqued our interest in Verto was its ability to address the decades-old interoperability and care coordination problems in healthcare without modifying existing EMRs or workflows,” said Matan Hazanov, VP of Vestra Ventures.
“COVID-19 has only accelerated digital transformation in healthcare, so we looked to partner with leading investors to support our rapid growth,” Verto’s CEO added.
Verto supports virtual care, streamlines data collection, allows for coordination between healthcare facilities, and acts as a patient engagement hub. For instance, Verto’s tech allows long-term care providers to access patient’s full medical histories from different hospital and laboratory information systems with ease, enabling them to offer more personalized care.
“Healthcare is undergoing a rapid shift away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ experiences towards a future where the best patient outcomes are personalized and specific to each of us,” said Craig Leonard, senior investment director at MaRS IAF.
TORONTO, July 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Knockri, a leading developer of artificial intelligence video-based soft-skill assessment and talent mobility solutions, today announced it has closed an oversubscribed seed round of $2.15 Million USD led by Differential Ventures with participation from Bertelsmann Investments, Grand Ventures, and others to transform talent acquisition and increase diverse hiring.
“Knockri has the potential to change the face of the global workforce using technology that provides equal opportunity for all candidates. Candidates are judged on their skills, and not what they look like, their creed, or what school they graduated from. ”
Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Knockri has enabled Fortune 500 customers in technology, consulting and pharma to assess thousands of candidates worldwide, reduce hiring bias and eliminate unsuccessful interviews
Knockri's hiring solution assesses skills of candidates by merging industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology and artificial intelligence to better quantify key performing skills for a job role.
Knockri was co-founded by Jahanzaib Ansari in 2016. Ansari couldn't find work because of his long ethnic name. He would often apply to jobs and never hear back from employers. While feeling confused and looking for answers, Maaz Rana, Knockri's COO and co-founder, suggested Ansari anglicize his name. Soon after anglicizing his name, he started receiving interviews and job offers from the same managers that had previously overlooked him.
Ansari and Rana collaborated with childhood friend, Faisal Ahmed, a machine-learning scientist, to create Knockri – a skills assessment tool deeply rooted in I-O psychology and built from the ground up by a diverse and specialized team that is hyper focused on ethical AI and reducing hiring bias.
"Our ability to oversubscribe during this period of global unrest is a testament to our dedicated team and the world's need for a fair and scalable hiring solution that is deeply infused in science and predictive analytics," said Jahanzaib Ansari, Knockri CEO and co-founder. "Knockri's unparalleled ability to reduce bias and predict job role success by assessing key performing skills has created a unique value proposition that reduces time and cost for clients while procuring a better candidate experience that heightens diversity and talent performance."
The current Knockri executive team – including co-founders Faisal Ahmed, CTO, and Maaz Rana, COO – will continue to lead the company with the addition of Differential Ventures co-managing partner Nick Adams to the board of directors. Knockri has raised almost $2.5 Million USD in seed funding to date.
"Knockri has harnessed machine learning in a brilliant and innovative way to simultaneously improve efficiency and reduce bias in hiring. Their technology is ideally suited for dealing with many problems in enterprise hiring today, and Knockri's product introduction is timed well to have a significant impact on improving fairness in hiring practices and speeding the growth of workforces as our economy grows," said David Magerman, who is a co-managing partner and chief technology officer for Differential Ventures as well as an advocate for responsible use of data science.
The company's video, audio and written screening platforms seamlessly integrate into existing Applicant Tracking Systems, and Knockri's API is compatible with the most widely used and best-in-class talent acquisition solutions. The company's services are also offered in multiple languages.
“Amplify Capital is thrilled to participate in this seed round for an impact company that can help reduce workforce inequality at scale and improve business performance.”
"Shifts in hiring practices are likely to continue long after COVID-19," said Ansari. "Knockri reduces the need for face-to-face interaction by assessing candidates remotely, and our mission to create a strong and safe talent acquisition process is more important now than ever. With our growing global footprint, coupled with customer allies seeing the benefits of our platform, we aim to employ evidence-based artificial intelligence across worldwide organizations as a catalyst for social change, while generating competitive advantages and transforming talent acquisition and identification functions."
About Knockri
Knockri is an AI video based, soft-skill assessment tool, that helps reduce unconscious bias and shortlists the best fit job candidates to interview, during the early screening process of hiring. Knockri helps eliminate unsuccessful interviews, while identifying exceptional candidates and increasing candidate diversity by merging video intelligence, artificial intelligence and science to quantify soft skills like confidence and empathy. Learn more at: www.knockri.com.
Knockri Social Networks
Twitter: www.twitter.com/KnockriCo
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/Knockri
Facebook: www.facebook/Knockri
YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/Knockri
July 7, 2020
Impact investors are double bottom line investors. We look for financial return alongside “impact”. What is impact? Well, it’s different to each impact investor, but generally a positive impact outcome is something we can quantify such as lower GHG emissions, improved access to quality healthcare or improved skill levels in our K-12 students to prepare them for the future of work.
Today, the challenges of our global economy have been exposed under COVID-19 for all investors to see. Real concerns of inequality in industries including healthcare, education and job security are now part of the conversations in rebuilding the economy. Testing, protective equipment, and deciding who gets treated and who supports those patients of COVID is a scramble at best. Our schools had to quickly adapt to remote learning platforms and face the reality that school campuses actually provided more than an education, but a safe haven, technology, and too often a balanced meal.
These sudden swift market changes and broad acceptance of the gaps in the system support many impact investors thesis on solving for the future of health and work. When the government comes in to be the primary customer, and private payers start paying for essential services like these, it paves the way to why impact investment portfolios generally outperform or at minimum perform as well as their non-impact comparable asset class.
Because impact investors look at problems in society that if solved, can affect a lot of people, significantly; those solutions tend to have secondary domino effects across society, reinforcing the business and sector.
COVID-19 has exposed the cracks in the system. Impact investors, such as Amplify Capital were already tackling these for years as we looked to solve gaps in our society through business innovation and scale. Our impact investments cover improving drug outcomes, democratizing quality health care and access to quality and affordable mental health support. In education, as an investment group — impact investors have long known that education access in North America is unequal and uneven. Impact investors have sought out technology to supplement in-class learning to provide more personalized and wider access to quality education.
As communities move back to some version of normal we can ask ourselves, “what needs to change”? Can we prioritize equal access to quality education and equal access to quality healthcare for all? Can we agree that if we had that level of access we could be more resilient as a society to face any healthcare or environmental challenge we are bound to face in the next decade if not sooner?
Impact investing can help support the roadmap to get ahead and build for the future we want. In addition, early stage innovation investments in social sectors create jobs and skills alongside the business. If we expand our investment goals beyond financial return, we can emphasize the ultimate outcome of that business on society.
Photo by Holden Baxter on Unsplash
We have the power to shape what recovery from the COVID-19 crisis looks like. We need to start asking how we can use investments to shift our preparedness and make investments that can benefit the economy, people, and the environment. This crisis has demonstrated just how applicable and adaptable our portfolio of impactful companies can be. Inkblot, an online platform that provides low-cost, anytime, video mental health counselling, was able to pick up the dramatic uptick in need for mental health support. Chalk, an all-in-one education platform that streamlines curriculum and instruction for educators, is helping to support K-12 schools that seek to pivot to distance learning and maintain education outcomes. ClassCraft, through their scalable technology platform, was able to provide free access to their remote education program to keep kids supported engaged with each other and the teacher at home. What sets these companies apart are the integrated impact targets which keep them accountable and moving forward through good and challenging times.
What are your investments doing to support our best future? We have seen impact investments provide both financial and impact outcomes. We hope all investors start thinking about how they can incorporate impact into their portfolios.
A pair of Sudbury based biotech companies, specializing in wearable and portable health care devices, are the latest additions to the Health Sciences North Research Institute’s (HSNRI) facility on Walford Road.
Flosonics Medical is a biotech company that has already received international attention for their invention known as the Flopatch – a wireless and wearable sensor that uses ultrasound to monitor vital signs for critically ill patients. The Flopatch collects information on heart rate, pulse, blood flow and fluid levels of patients and then transfers that information to a smartphone app so that the patient can be monitored in real-time from anywhere on the planet.
“Imagine a patient who needed to be airlifted from a remote community on the James Bay Coast. If the nursing station in that community has the Flopatch, a critical care physician in Sudbury could be monitoring that patient as the helicopter is in transit. The doctor could be telling staff to do different things to help keep the patient stable and prevent their heart from stopping,” says Joe Eibl, CEO and co-founder of Flosonics Medical.
Verv Technology is a Sudbury start-up that’s developing breakthrough technology in home health monitoring. The company has developed a device that will allow a person to monitor a number of different health indicators all with a small drop of blood and a smart phone.
Home health monitoring has taken off in recent years as large companies like Apple, Samsung and Amazon have declared this the next major technology. While home monitoring devices for diabetes and high blood pressure have been around for many years, Verv’s technology is a game changer as it can do something that no other portable device can do – separate plasma from the blood sample using a very simple and inexpensive device.
“No more waiting in doctors’ offices, no more driving to the lab, or big needles drawing multiple vials of blood and waiting days for results,” says Verv President Jeff Sutton. “Our platform allows for multiple tests on one disposable cartridge that collects the blood and performs analysis that can be read within 15 minutes, all controlled by your smartphone.”
Verv will continue to work on the technology at HSNRI’s lab on Walford Road, with the hope of putting this device on the market in 2-3 years. Flosonics expects to have the Flopatch officially on the market in the coming months and already has potential customers lined up in the United States.
Partnering with Flosonics and Verv is important for HSN and HSNRI as the organizations strengthen their academic and research impact improve health outcomes for patients of Northeastern Ontario.
“Toronto-based Inkblot Therapy, which uses matching algorithms to connect clients with mental health counsellors, has raised $700,000 CAD for the second tranche of its private placement. This second portion of funding brings the total raised in Inkblot’s private placement to $1.7 million CAD.
Investors include Amplify Capital (formerly MaRS Catalyst Fund), with participation from Good&Well, Active Impact Investments, The Good Fund, and several Toronto-based angel investors. Inkblot raised $1 million CAD in the first tranche of this round of funding in January.
Luke Vigeant, co-founder and CEO at Inkblot, told BetaKit since the company completed the first portion of this raise, Amplify Capital and Good&Well doubled their subscription amount, and the startup was able to secure some new investors. Inkblot was originally aiming to raise an additional $500,000, which makes this round oversubscribed by $200,000.
This funding will be used to grow Inkblot’s corporate client base in Canada and the United States, as well as support its key partners and provider network in the United States, in order to meet demand south of the border.
“This investment comes at a pivotal time in the world of virtual mental health services,” said Vigeant. “It’s been our busiest week in the history of the company, we’re working really hard to ensure all of the companies, schools, and people reaching out to get additional support during this time of need.”
Amplify Capital portfolio company Invivo.ai has joined Mila’s efforts to develop novel data-driven solutions to assist with COVID-19 outbreak.
“Sébastien Giguère from InVivo AI leads a data-efficient deep learning to better model emerging biology. The COVID-19 outbreak offers a solemn reminder of how little we know about emerging biology. Novel algorithms are needed for these types of data poor environments.
Launched in 2018, InVivo AI is developing novel algorithms capable of learning from small and noisy datasets. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, the startup is leveraging their platform to learn models of pathways in the immune system to better predict immune response. The team is working on modeling proteasomal cleavage, TAP transport, antigen binding to MHC, antigen processing to the cell surface and recognition of MHC-antigen complexes by T-Cells and B-cells, with the goal of providing insight into immunogenic regions of the virus.”
Five years ago, at the grizzled old age of 22, William Zhou was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 list in education. Zhou had an education company, Chalk, he said would help teachers make and monitor their teaching plans and curricula. At the time, Forbes noted that 100,000 teachers were using the system.
Two years ago, the number of teachers on Chalk flipped past 250,000. Now, Zhou says, half a million teachers use his lesson plan platform.
When the company started, Zhou says, he was focused on helping teachers plan their lessons. Seeing his own high school – high school! – teachers struggle with lesson planning, Zhou had the stereotypical entrepreneurial reaction. “There has to be a better way,” he said.
“For teachers,” Zhou says, his product “is a lesson planner. But really the kicker, the lightbulb is that it’s not siloed off from the curriculum, it’s something that teachers can pull directly from the curriculum they use to make their plan.”
And now, he says, the focus has grown. “We’re not just the teacher side,” he said. “We’re really looking at the entire district, the curriculum as a whole.”
The link between teacher lesson planning and actual curriculum – what’s being taught – is increasingly important for districts, most of which are required to show that their teachers are delivering the lessons, programs and activities that align with set standards and that those classroom deliverables align with one another. Designing that alignment, being able to visualize it, is called curriculum mapping. And, according to Zhou, that’s what Chalk really does.
“It’s a process almost every district has to undertake, to plan exactly what we are teaching to our kids – going from grade level to grade level ensuring we’re teaching the right standards, making sure that ultimately we’re delivering the right information,” Zhou said. “I equate it to very much like a business plan for the schools – here’s how we’re going to tackle what we teach.”
But, Zhou says, many, even most districts are not doing that – or at least not doing it as well as they’d like to. “Everyone wants to get to the level where curriculum is unique to their learners,” he said. “But most of the districts don’t have that ability yet.” In fact, he says, there are a, “large number of districts where teachers aren’t even planning at all.”
That’s the opportunity. And it’s showing up. Chalk’s district growth mirrors its teacher acquisition. “Three or four years ago we were in four states, now we’re in 27,” Zhou said, noting that his company is, “on track to hit profit this year.”
The growth is impressive, and the business model is familiar – design a good product that teachers want to use, make it free to them then sell to districts. Familiar is not a criticism; it’s familiar because it works.
Even though the company bootstrapped to start, it now has VC backing. “Mostly impact investing folks,” Zhou says – Amplify Capital, John Baker, CEO of D2L, and investor Randall Howard have all gone in.
“Today it’s all about growth,” Zhou said, citing Chalk’s emerging work with Chicago Public Schools as an example. But he also noted that the company is looking ahead – considering “a more premium offering” for teachers using the planning tools and perhaps moving beyond providing technology only. “We tend to be a technology partner today, but that does not mean we don’t want to play [a different] role going forward.”
For now, Chalk is on a vital and under-served side of education technology – planning and mapping. “There are a ton of people out there measuring assessment, but that’s outcomes,” Zhou said. “We’ve seen so many other ed tech companies do that, ask what happened. We want to not just ask what happened, but why did it happen? The only way to do that is to look at the plan, to ask what’s your plan?”
“Curriculum,” Zhou said, “impacts everything – it drives everything in a school including their culture.” Helping teachers and districts get that right, or at least to do it better, in a planned, accessible and modern way is unquestionably important. Based on what’s happening at Chalk – what’s happed in the past five years – it looks like good business too.
