True Angle

As a clinician working with patients who had been diagnosed with head and neck cancer, Dr. Jana Rieger, PhD, frequently heard one disheartening reaction. That coping with dysphagia — a swallowing disorder that often accompanies that kind of cancer — is so devastating that many patients insisted they wouldn’t have gone through the treatments if they’d known they would have to live with that problem. There was a solution — intensive therapy. The challenge? “The equipment that I needed to do that properly was big and stuck in my lab,” she says. “But the eureka moment was hearing those stories — ‘We have to do better for patients. There’s no reason they have to live like this.’”

At that time, about 10 years ago, items such as Fitbits were hitting the market — technology was becoming increasingly mobile — which got Rieger and Dylan Scott, and their colleague Gabriela Constantinescu, thinking. “It was, ‘Hey, why can’t we give patients something they can put in their pocket and take home?’” So they founded True Angle and entered the market with a product called Mobili-T. “It’s a small device that fits under your chin and measures the muscles that are responsible for swallowing,” explains Rieger. “It’s connected to an app, which takes patients through a series of exercises and connects them to their clinician. The clinician can be at the hospital, the patient can be at home, and there’s this really nice connection that’s maintained.”

Alumni of the Creative Destruction Lab-Rockies, a program housed at the Haskayne School of Business at UCalgary, Rieger and Scott have overseen the implementation of True Angle at more than 50 U.S. clinics, including Stanford University, UCLA and the Mayo Clinic. “The plan is to expand,” says Rieger, adding that, via UCalgary’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience, they’re exploring the use of their product with stroke patients. “Specifically looking at the whole journey — from admission to the hospital, because you’ve had a stroke, to the time you go home.”

Visit True Angle’s website for more information.

True Angle Medical has received investment from UCeed, a venture philanthropy fund accelerating UCalgary and community-based startup companies to advance problem-solving research, create jobs and fuel the economy. A key program in the UCalgary innovation ecosystem, UCeed bridges the gap between innovation, demonstration and commercialization, and is managed by UCalgary’s knowledge-transfer and business incubator, Innovate Calgary.

UCeed Child Health is funded by the generosity of our community through the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation and its mission to inspire our community to invest in excellence in child health, research and family centred care.