Seven start-up ventures founded by UBC faculty of medicine community members have joined the 50th cohort of UBC’s Venture Founder program to help address global challenges in areas including AI, biotechnology, health care and cultural innovation.
Venture Founder, which is part of Innovation UBC, supports the next wave of UBC entrepreneurs whose ideas and scientific breakthroughs are set to transform industries and create lasting global impact.
The program provides UBC students, faculty, staff and researchers with support in launching early-stage ventures through experiential workshops, mentorship, and foundational training. The teams explore venture validation, business model development and leadership capacity-building to establish a viable start-up company and build their management and business skills.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine is home to a vibrant community of entrepreneurs who are turning research, discoveries and ideas into transformative health solutions. Together, they play a pivotal role in powering B.C.’s life sciences sector — the fastest growing in Canada — which now includes more than 2,000 companies, many of which are UBC spin-offs or lead by UBC community members.
UBC Medicine-affiliated ventures
CheckMark
Deploying trained photographers in pharmacies and other areas to help diagnose skin cancer more early.
- UBC affiliation: Faculty of Medicine
- Founding team: Sabrina Nurmohamed, Vanessa McLaughlin, Tom McLaughlin
Echobot
Transforming communication in long-term care homes to improve resident care.
- UBC affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Science
- Founding team: Rosemary Vayalikunnel, Rusteen Tabaei, Arshia Daeizadeh, Shania Lopez
Eona Health
Providing non-invasive early diagnostics to women to detect gynecologic conditions.
- UBC affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Science
- Founding team: Arabella Helgason, Karolin Heinze, Dollina Dodani, Aline Talhouk, Michael Anglesio
Haibu Health
Unlocking the power of data for people with diabetes to improve population health and drive healthcare costs down.
- UBC affiliation: Faculty of Medicine
- Founding team: Simona McKee, Shazhan Amed
OncoNext
Life-long ovarian cancer treatment that combines chemo and immunotherapy using a new delivery system that optimizes the chemotherapy compounds.
- UBC affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, BC Cancer
- Founding team: Cara Gaffney, Nasim Sarrami, Maryam Sharifiaghdam
Result
Platform to provide access to complex scientific articles rewritten in lay language for general audiences written by humans.
- UBC affiliation: Faculty Medicine, Faculty of Science
- Founding team: Marissa Lithopoulos, Andrew Johnston
TeleSonics
Providing remote healthcare access to everyone to improve health equity.
- UBC affiliation: Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Applied Science, Sauder School of Business
- Founding team: Tim Salcudean, David Black, Valentina Toro Chinchilla, Qi Zeng