Throughout Canada, innovation hubs are providing inspired solutions to global challenges.
But how are these hubs born? Why do they thrive? Does a city’s place on the planet give it a natural edge in ingenuity?
To explore the correlation between environment and innovation—and why some cities become global meeting points for healthtech—we set out to meet the scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs and clinicians responsible for much of this reinvention.
Shaf Keshavjee was a medical student in 1983 when the world’s first successful lung transplant was performed at Toronto General Hospital. Today, the hospital is the world’s busiest lung transplant centre, performing over 200 procedures each year—thanks in large part to his work with Marcelo Cypel in developing a machine that can keep lungs viable for up to three days outside the body. “It’s an ICU bed for the lung,” explains Dr Keshavjee.
This innovation has not only reduced time pressures on patients and doctors, who once had to operate at a moment’s notice, but has also allowed clinicians to assess donor lungs they might previously have discarded as too risky to use. They now make use of more than 40% of donor lungs—up from 20% in the past.
More than 1,000 transplants have been supported by the device, the Toronto Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion System, which is now used in hospitals on five continents. “What we invent in this lab here, we translate to the operating room,” Dr Keshavjee says.
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