Digital : Innovation + Job News

Last week, Ontario took a step towards digital health with the launch of Akira.

Akira is a mobile app for iOS and Android that was developed by Dustin Walper after his own brush with thyroid cancer left him frustrated and annoyed with the Canadian healthcare system.

After founding and building his previous startup MyPlanet for five years, he felt that this was something he had to do.

“As someone who was busy trying to build a business, anytime you have any kind of medical issue you just want to get it over with,” a task which Walper recalls wasn’t easy to do.

“That was the core frustration that I felt with the health care system.”

Akira costs $9.99 per month and launched officially on Wed., May 18. Walper’s goal with this service was to put a doctor in the pocket of every Canadian.

Several physicians have already signed up to take part in Akira’s mission, enabling them to digitally interact with patients who’ve downloaded the app whenever the patient requires.

While Akira has the potential to lessen the burden on the healthcare system by redirecting non-critical inquiries to a digital service, Walper stresses that in order for Akira to serve its purpose, it shouldn’t be used for medical issues that require a physical examination.

“There are some things that just weren’t appropriate for this kind of service,” he says.

He anticipates however, that this is what Canadian patients need – a fast, reliable way to have their immediate healthcare needs met.

In order to do that, Akira has partnered with another popular Canadian health startup, PopRX. Unlike Akira, PopRX specializes in digitizing the pharmaceutical industry by offering prescription delivery, renewal and inquiries all though an app.

“What’s really important for our type of model is that we want to make healthcare accessible and convenient to everyone,” said Walper. “A big part of that is prescriptions.

PopRx fonuder Dr. Ali Esmail stated that as soon as the platform began allowing for specialists (Akira only supports general practitioners at the moment and Esmail is an ear, nose and throat specialist), he would gladly consider joining the platform.

Esmail goes on to agree with Walper in saying that redirecting non-critical medical issues can potentially reduce the strain on Canada’s medical system.

A lot of those people show up in emergency rooms or wait for hours in walk-in clinics,” said Esmail.

Overall however, he believes that Akira and PopRx share one mission: to bring the benefits of telemedicine to Canadians.

“What PopRx and what Akira are trying to do is provide a much more convenient service.”  

Currently, Akira is not covered under OHIP, though several tech companies have begun offering Akira as part of their employee benefits packages.

For musicians interested in learning classical music, taking music theory classes can be a good choice—but for those who want to learn genres like R&B, folk, rock, and pop, there’s a disconnect, says Alex Andrews.

Andrews is a developer and founder of Ten Kettles, a small indie dev company behind Waay, a mobile app meant to help DIY musicians with music theory. Before creating Waay, Andrews, from a young age, was passionate about music. He’s spent years 
working on developing his skills and touring with local Toronto bands.

"After teaching music and playing in bands in and around the city for years, I wanted to combine this passion for applied music theory with my background as an engineer, and that's how 
Waay was born!” says Andrews.

Waay works by offering short video lessons emphasizing practical music theory and practice with interactive music lessons. While there are currently three achievement levels like Melodies and Chords, Ten Kettles is working on adding more lessons. At 
$4.99 for the iPhone and iPad app, it can also be a better alternative to expensive private lessons. In the meantime, users can work with the current lessons and easily track their progress using the app.

“There are so many fantastic ways to use music theory when you write music, ways that help you be more creative, get more songs written, and have more fun,” says Andrews. “For many people, they'd never seen music theory used as a creative tool before. It was great to see what they could do with it.” 

Andrews says that music theory that requires musicians in non-classical fields to learn how to analyze Bach and Beethoven can make musicians feel they aren’t getting the most out of the education. And as someone who has taught private music lessons tailored to each student, Andrews hopes that his app will similarly help students learn theory at their own pace and in whatever genre they choose. He hopes the app will attract people who aren’t necessarilly interested in an overly-structured approach to learning music.

“Why are you learning music theory to write a music exam, when you could be learning music theory to, you know, write music?” Andrews says. “That's the approach I took when teaching private lessons and writing music with bands in Toronto, and it was such a fantastic way to make music theory genuinely useful and get people excited.”

As protests against Uber and City challenges rage on in Toronto, the taxi industry has been grappling with the question of how to deal with the disruption of its industry and bring its technology to the 21st century. 

eCab, a global alliance of taxi companies committed to bringing innovative digital technology to the industry, has teamed up with Royal Taxi in Toronto to develop a smartphone app for the company. The eCab app in Toronto follows the app’s successful presence in Vancouver of last year. According to Royal Taxi, the availability of an app helps the company cater to a younger demographic that expects efficiency in their daily life, as well as leverage the fact that they are a safer option. 

“Traditional taxi companies have typically relied on calls coming in to their Dispatch centre. An APP changes that and adds a greater dimension to the transportation industry—not to mention increases demand by a diverse demographic group,” said Spiros Bastas, general manager for Royal Taxi. “The glaring difference between our App and that provided by services such as Uber is safety, reliability and compliance.”

The Toronto app works by allowing users to get connected to the nearest Royal Taxi in the area, choose from regular, executive, and wheelchair accessible cars, and—most importantly—pay through the app. Users also have the option of enjoying WiFi in the vehicle.

“Urban mobility is facing a major evolution and the smartphone generation keeps evolving. The digital revolution and the unprecedented new competition entering all sectors of activity has to be addressed positively,” said Gilles Gomis, regional head of eCab. “eCab brings to the industry the tools to fill these needs while focusing on technology and quality of services.”

For the third year in a row, Bell Media and Yellowpages are partnering to run their Shop the Hood campaign, a program designed to support small businesses by advertising the benefits of local shopping.

Bell Media will support the program by airing televised profiles of Canadian neighbourhoods through its media properties. These include the Marilyn Denis show, which will host four experts like Charles MacPherson, Tommy Smythe, Vijaya Selvaraju, and Rodney Bowers, who will show off their favourite neighbourhoods. ETALK hosts will feature profiles from four major Canadian cities, including Queen West in Toronto and Gastown in Vancouver.
 
“There is a digital gap that exists at the local level in Canada. Canadians are global leaders in terms of digital media usage, however, adoption of these tools is much slower among Canadian businesses,” said Paul Brosseau, vice president of brand communications at Yellow Pages. “Three quarters of Canadians will research purchases online but less than half of Canadian businesses have a digital presence.”
 
At the same time, Yellowpages is promoting the #shopthehood hashtag to encourage Canadians to promote their favourite local shops, and their YP Shopwise app that shows off local deals.

“Access to placement in YP Shopwise free to all participating businesses offering promotions,” said Brosseau. “By downloading the YP Shopwise app, Canadians can instantly access exclusive Shop The Neighbourhood promotions available nearby at local stores.”
 

In an age of Uber and Airbnb, tech startups everywhere are in the business of disrupting traditional industries that are slow to change, and making them more efficient, faster, and of course, cheaper.

This is exactly what Zak Homuth, founder of Upverter, did with the launch of the company’s Parts Concierge service. Upverter, which already works to make hardware engineers’ lives easier through their cloud-engineering platform, established Parts Concierge as a “virtual assistant for engineers”. With Parts Concierge, hardware engineers can request any part to be built on Upverter and added to the design on their behalf. This process can normally take weeks — as engineers have to wait for unique parts to be built and shipped before continuing with their design — and costly mistakes are only found once the manufacturing is done.

Once a unique part is made using Parts Concierge, it’s added to the library to make it easier for other engineers to access instead of having different engineers constantly request the same parts. “We looked at our stats, and the very first thing everyone did when they tried Upverter was to search for a part,” said Homuth. “If they found the part, there was a pretty good chance they’d stick around. And if they didn’t there was a pretty good chance they’d leave.”  

While Upverter wasn’t originally focused on the parts industry, the stats had Homuth thinking that this is something that his company could tackle. “We couldn’t just build every part in the world, but maybe we could build every part that a user needed fast enough that it would be like it was there in the first place.”

Homuth said that the reason why the hardware industry has been so slow to develop a comparable service is because it is still largely dominated by offline desktop software. The cloud, however, is disrupting this industry. “To provide a service like the parts concierge users would have had to email someone, ask for a part, the service provider would then have to make the part in the right format, and then email the part back. Most engineers would probably wonder why not just do it themselves,” said Homuth. “It just wouldn't work as well without the cloud. It would feel very rough and inefficient.”


 

A new Toronto startup wants to help the city's local artists create their art. 

Describing itself as "an Airbnb for the creative industry," Spacefy gives creatives from musicians to photographers an online platform to find spaces for their creative endeavours. 

If the concept behind Spacefy sounds familiar, it's because a similar service called SpaceFinder Toronto launched earlier in the year. The crucial difference here is that Spacefy was started by a group of three Canadians: Judeh Siwady, Alyas Ali and Moya Semaan.  

As of its recent launch, the company's website already includes hundreds of creative spaces across the city, including some well-known ones like the Phase One recording studio and Cube Nightclub near Queen and Spadina. That said, like the service that inspired it, Spacefy was designed to help creators from across disciplines. So, while it's possible to rent a $10,000 per-day venue through the site, many of the spaces found on Spacefy start at a far more reasonable $25 per hour. 

Spacefy plans to expand to Vancouver in the near future. 

Six months after the launch of the country’s first fintech cluster, MaRS announced on August 18 that Interac has become the latest major player to join its collaborative network for startups and already-established companies working on developing new financial technologies.

As a part of the agreement, the Interac Association and Acxsys Corporation, the two organizations behind Interac, the payment system that powers almost all the debit cards in Canada, will join MaRS’s financial technology cluster. According to Adam Nanjee, the head of cluster, Interac will work with startups that are based in MaRS’s College and University campus to collaborate on new technologies like crypto-currencies.   

“This partnership indicates that there’s strong interest from Canadian financial services providers to help facilitate innovation,” said Nanjee when asked to touch on the significance of partnership. “For our cluster this engagement is critical — building a global fintech hub requires players in all sectors of financial services – from the banks to the payment networks.”

For Torontonians not immersed in the city’s startup community, Nanjee says it’s partnerships like this that will help continue build Toronto’s reputation as an important financial hub.

“This type of collaboration positions our city to become a global leader in financial services innovation on par with international fintech hubs like New York, London and Hong Kong. Creative new products, digital channels and experiences are developing here at MaRS where financial institutions are working alongside startups and this is something we should be proud of”

Previously, other financial institutions and companies, including CIBC, PayPal, Moneris and UGO, have partnered with MaRS to join the FinTech cluster.

The initiative, which is one of  its kind in Canada, provides local area startups with access to the regional innovation centre’s suite of resources, as well as facilitates access to startup capital and the centre’s already established partner and customer networks.

MaRS also has two other clusters located within its building. One is devoted to legal technology; the other is focused on retail and digital commerce technology. They provide many of the same services and resources.
 

On the same day that President Barack Obama hosted the White House's first ever startup demo day, the world's most powerful political leader also announced the start of new initiative aimed at increasing diversity within the field of engineering. 

Over 90 North American universities, including two Canadian schools—the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo—have agreed to work toward recruiting more women and underrepresented minorities into their engineering programs. 

Each of the 92 schools taking part in the initiative has agreed to a four part action plan that, among other things, calls for the participants to work closer with schools that work with underrepresented populations. 

"Engineers are working hard to find solutions to some of the most critical challenges of our time, including environmental degradation, urban issues, health care and more. We know that including diverse perspectives in the field increases creativity, which in turns drives better, more innovative ideas and approaches for the future," says Michelle Beaton, the associate director of the University of Toronto's Engineering Student Recruitment and Retention Office. 

"U of T is a trailblazer in fostering diversity within the engineering field, and under the leadership of our dean Cristina Amon, we continually seek opportunities nationally and internationally to ensure women and underrepresented minorities are attracted to and thrive in the profession."

According to Beaton, the University of Toronto is well on its way to answering President Obama's call for greater gender diversity. In 2014, 30.6 per cent of the students starting first year classes at the university's Faculty of Engineering were women. Beaton says this the best ratio among engineering schools in Canada.  

On August 5, IBM announced the opening of a new Bluemix Garage within the Ryerson Digital Media Zone. Following previous launches in San Francisco and London, England, this new addition to the university-based startup incubator is the first of its kind in Canada. 

The Garage will offer a variety of services based upon IBM Bluemix, a cloud computing platform that the historic company built to help service clients both large and small. The staff at the Garage, which have access to IBM's vast resources, will be tasked with helping support any startups or enterprise clients that want to leverage the service. 

"Bluemix provides a very rich set of services and supports all sorts of ways to do programming," says Rachel Reinitz, the CTO of IBM Bluemix Garage. "By doing so it enables developers to build applications much faster and it lowers the costs for companies of all sizes to build and deploy applications."

Reinitz, a resident of Silicon Valley and one of IBM's most distinguished engineers, is the one responsible for bringing the Garage to Canada.  

"I picked Toronto very early on as a city, because we saw so much interest," "I have Canadian clients coming to San Francisco to work with us. IBM also has a presence in the city, and there’s a great downtown area.  In a lot of ways, it was just a matter of finding the right location."

“We are pleased to welcome the first and only Canadian Bluemix Garage into the DMZ,” said Abdullah Snobar, executive director of the DMZ. “This new partnership will provide IBM with an opportunity to work with some of our country’s top tech talent to explore new ideas and methodologies. Our entrepreneurs will also greatly benefit from access to IBM’s expertise and vast business network.”

460 King Street West will not be the address for Toronto's newest condo complex. 

Once home to Global Village Backpackers, the building stood empty for several months after the hostel's closure in 2014. That is until two weeks ago when the Konrad Group, a Toronto-based digital consultancy firm, announced that it had acquired the building and unveiled a plan to turn the historic corner into Canada's newest innovation hub. 

According to co-CEO Geordie Konrad, the company has a multifaceted plan for the space. First and foremost, 460 King Street West will be the new home of BrainStation, the coding academy Konrad Group purchased last winter. 

Secondly, part of the building will also serve as a new co-working and event space called BrainStation Spaces. 

Lastly, a new coffee shop called Quantum Coffee will call the building home once renovations are completed. Like everything else associated with this project, Quantum Coffee will have a technology bent. For instance, instead of waiting on a barista to serve their coffee, customers will be able to use their smartphone to take advantage of Canada's first app-enabled pour over machine. 

Konrad says it was important for him and his colleagues that the whole building have a unique identity. 

"I think had we put a different, more corporate coffee chain there, the impact of the building would be completely different," he says. "By operating our own coffee shop, we're able to create a product that people in the King West technology sector are interested in." 

"For us, we want this building to be an asset to the community," says Konrad. "We want this to be a place where people can come to take part in events, workshops and get connected with one another. We're a part of this community too, so we want to make sure that what ends up on the corner of King and Spadina is something that we're all proud of."

On July 22, Facebook Canada announced that it's set to become a tenant of MaRS's West Tower. 

The move is scheduled to happen sometime in 2016, and, according to Tim Jackson, the vice president of corporate and community development at MaRS, the company has told the innovation hub that it plans to double its headcount in the near future.  

After being completed in early 2014, the 20 storey West Tower stood nearly empty for several months. This led to a slew of bad press for the innovation hub, and a $309-million buyout from the provincial government. Since then, the fortunes of the building have started to reverse with marquee names like San Francisco-based Airbnb and Toronto-based Figure 1 becoming tenants. 

According to Jackson, with Facebook in tow the majority of the tower is now spoken for, and the challenge has become finding space for everyone. 

"It's a bit like playing Tetris with all the tenants," he says. 

"We're tying to fit everyone where we can, but effectively the building is fully spoken for with companies that have either a signed lease, are in the process of negotiating one or have expressed interest," he adds. "We’re very comfortable that we will have the building leased up by the timeline that was laid out to us by the province."

Jackson ends by saying that he and his colleagues at MaRS expect to have more exciting announcements about future tenants toward the end of the summer. 

Anyone that has visited City Hall recently might have a noticed several new high-tech informations kiosks placed throughout the building. They're about the height of a person, feature a touchscreen interface and are able to provide a wealth of information about the building and its services.   

The City enlisted the help of two tech firms—Calgary-based YouRhere and Transit Screen, a company that operates out of the United States—to assist with the project. The former created the transit screen that's located close to the building's entrance. The unit provide real-time information on transit services like the TTC, Go Transit and Bike Share Toronto. 

Each kiosk also has a variety of accessibility features built-in—the electronic directory, for instance, is able to lower its menu when someone in a wheelchair attempts to operate it—and both support a variety of languages, including English, French and Spanish. 

"The City has been focusing on enhancing customer service and providing smart transportation information to residents and businesses for some time," says Natasha Hinds Fitzsimmins, a spokesperson for the City of Toronto. "The introduction of the Interactive Electronic Directory and Transit Screen technology pilots at City Hall is a key component of that work."

According to Fitzsimminis, the City plans to test each of the kiosks over the course of the next year. During this time, it will look for ways to refine the information that each unit provides and solicit feedback from  the general public. Once that process is done, it will hold a competitive bid process to find a company that will the necessary transit data and units. 

"My first experience with creating technologies was when I was 13," says Jevin Sidhu, the 15 year old co-founder of Project Cipher, a recently-launched coding school in Peel Region. "I coded my first website using HTML and CSS and it was incredibly [rudimentary], but it was my piece of the Internet and it was breathtaking to conceptualize that anyone with Internet could access my amateur creation."

Project Cipher started as a way for Sidhu to help his friends learn how to code. His co-founders wanted to learn how to code, but found that coding bootcamps and online courses weren't practical for high school students. 

"We thought about what these resources didn’t execute correctly and realized they didn’t provide an engaging environment, which was something school did really well," says Sidhu.

"Students are constantly helping each other out, whether that means studying for tests, completing projects and finishing off homework. We found in-person, working alongside others towards a similar goal is the most effective way of learning."

The initiative has a couple of features that distinguish it from other coding programs, says Sidhu. The main one is that the goal of the group's initial workshop is not provide high school students with an exhaustive coding education; instead, it's to give them a taste of what it's like to create something with a couple lines of code. 

To that end, the group is hosting a conference on August 20th that will give students an opportunity to see what the program is all about.  

Set to be held at Brampton City Hall, the one day conference will feature speakers from various startups and established companies, as well as freelancers. According to Sidhu, more than 500 students have expressed 

He goes on to say that the goal of the conference is to "promote and provide exposure for computer science through engaging talks and activities." On the same day, he and his co-founders plan to launch their Circles program. 

In the meantime, Project Cipher is attempting to find funding partners and more student leaders. 

High school students and parents can find out more about Project Cipher and the at its website. 

After a successful launch in Toronto, Future Design School (FDS) is expanding to other parts of South Western Ontario.   

Last week, the school announced a partnership with ventureLAB—a regional innovation centre that supports entrepreneurs in the York Region, Simcoe County and Muskoka District communities—and Southlake Regional Health Centre. 

The three organizations will work together to host a one week summer camp that will provide students entering grades six to eight an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship. Starting on August 17, Sarah Prevette, the founder of FDS, says the aim of the program is to help youth unlock their inner creativity. 

"Our summer program is really about getting kids involved in exploring what they’re interested in, what they’re passionate about and what they’re good at," she says.  

Since the last time Yonge Street spoke with Prevette, the program she and her colleagues started at MaRS has quickly expanded to offer not just workshops for youth but programming for teachers, as well. It's all part of her plan to help Canada's youth become independent self-starters. 

"I think the program enables kids to see themselves as capable entrepreneurs. They’re able to look at the world and see all the opportunities around them," says Prevette. "I think that’s an important cultural shift we need to be making. The more we can enable kids to see themselves as empowered problem solvers, the better off we’re going to be as a society." 

Interested parents can learn more about this particular program and all the initiatives Future Design School run on its website. 

Toronto is a city full of makers.

Toronto Mini Maker Faire, an annual celebration of the city’s maker culture that is hosted at the Toronto Reference Library, is relaunching as the Maker Festival. As per usual, this year’s festival will still conclude in a two-day extravaganza during the August long weekend at the city’s biggest library, but, to spice things up, there will also be additional events held in the week leading up to the festival grand finale.

According to Ceda Verbakel, the festival’s creative director, last year’s Maker Faire attracted 10,000 people, making it the biggest maker event in Canada.

"An event on the scale of Maker Festival puts Toronto on the map as a city full of innovative technology and creative ingenuity," said Linda Mackenzie, the director of research and reference libraries at the Toronto Public Library, in an email interview. "As the Library—along with our peers in the education, government, and creative sectors—continues to re-imagine our spaces, programs, and services for the 21st century, hosting an event like Maker Festival underscores the Library's role in fostering digital literacy and creativity by bringing makers and learners together as excited and active participants in innovation."

Her colleague Eric Boyd, the Maker Festival’s programming director, added, "You might not know it, but Toronto's tech community is bursting at the seams—there are makerspaces, coding schools and start up incubators popping up across the city, and most nights of the week you can attend a meetup to talk to thought leaders in web development, wearables, Android apps, or the Internet of Things, to name a few."

The festival hasn’t announced specific programming yet, but it has said that it is currently looking for submissions. Those that are interested in taking part can apply here.

In the interest of full disclosure, Elena Yunusov, the Maker Festival’s Operations Director, is a contributor to Yonge Street Media.