Relentless RoundUp

24th Edition

November 14th is Sir Frederick Grant Banting’s birthday. A Canadian pharmacologist, orthopedist, field surgeon, trained midwife, Canada’s first professor of medical research and Nobel Prize winner. A bullied child in school who also had deep struggles with spelling which led to a litany of failed language courses.

Most Canadian children have learned about Banting’s scientific discovery in school, Insulin, that essential pancreatic hormone that regulates glucose in our bodies. I wish they also learned about his resilience.  

November 14th was selected as World Diabetes Day because it is Banting’s birthday. In 2007 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that designated today as World Diabetes Day underscoring the urgent need to pursue ‘multilateral efforts to promote and improve human health and provide access to treatment and health-care education.’ The resolution encouraged Member States to develop national policies for the prevention, treatment, and care of diabetes.

This resolution came 86 years after the original discovery of insulin in a lab at the University of Toronto, co-discovered by Banting and his student Charles Best, under the supervision of John Macleod.

This RoundUp is dedicated to amplifying the persistent need for prevention of Type 2 diabetes, management of life with both Type 1 & 2, and of course the outstanding need for a T1D cure.

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Relentless RoundUp

23rd Edition

Well hello Autumn. I like the cut of your jib. This year as my favourite season blows in, I still feel buoyed by Canada’s showing at the summer Olympics. It was exhilarating to watch veterans to first timers secure podium positions. I love watching competition tactics, highs, lows, hugs, tears, environment challenges (I am speaking to you River Seine) and team dynamics. The similarities with venture capital investing are fascinating.

Watching Canada perform on the global stage has always been a delight for me, from sport to healthcare innovation. There are many parallels. Including how you find high performance athletes taking on roles in high performance finance firms. The discipline and focus required to compete at an international level has clear transferable skills to the world of investment such as venture capital. We are fortunate to have  such an individual on our team and she is heading into an extraordinary October as a competitive athlete.

Meet Isabella Bertold, the Concord Pacific Racing Women’s Team skipper for Canada’s first-ever campaign at the historic Puig Women’s America’s Cup.

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Relentless RoundUp

22nd Edition

Witnessing the world actively engage in all that a lovely spring offers is invigorating. I am even cuing up a bike friendly meeting locations as I finally return to cycling following that wee multi-bone fracturing incident from a while back. If you have followed Relentless since inception, you will know we have always been staunch all-season advocates of active living and movement. ‘Mobility’ is a core investment focus for our health tech fund.

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Relentless RoundUp

21st Edition

Tenderness. That is my word of choice for 2024.

I chose tenderness to ground me for the year ahead. Personally, and professionally.

Not as in ‘I feel pain when my abdomen is touched’, but the noun that is generally defined as a combination of love and kindness. It can also be known to encompass resilience, determination, insight, optimism, compassion, hope and empathy.

Tenderness for myself. Tenderness for others. In my work world, my play world, and all the overlapping Venn diagram bits in between. Apropos to share with my community as we close out heart health month.

February is Heart Month – Keep on Stepping

Have you embraced this year’s Heart Health Month with a little extra passion? 2024 is a leap year, we get one bonus day. Tomorrow! One extra day to act, take steps, refresh our step strategy. When was the last time you checked that little heart icon on your iPhone that automatically tracks your step count? Or are you a classic Fitbit or pedometer user? Or do you go for walking time? It really doesn’t matter which tool you use to motivate, just move. Simply putting one foot in front of the other can mean big steps forward for your heart health.

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Relentless RoundUp - 20th Edition

Self-care. It has been top of mind as of late.

In September, my younger brother Billy spent 28 days in the trauma ICU.  I sat at his bedside most days. I held his hand, whispered words of encouragement to his deeply sedated being, and constantly repeated ‘You have been fixed. You are going to be okay.’ He heard me. He came back to us on Day 24. And yes, he is going to be okay.

Over the course of that soul crushing experience, one of Billy’s exceptional ICU nurses stopped me in my tracks when she asked me what I was doing to take care of myself. Me? What? It is amazing how quickly we can find ourselves slipping into non-compliance of our own health needs when focused on others. She nudged me to reflect. My personal tank was running on empty. She texted me later that night the following note:

RESET.

RESTART.

REFOCUS.

AS MANY TIMES AS YOU NEED TO, JUST DON’T QUIT.

So here is to the grand reset, as many times as we need to.

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Relentless RoundUp - 19th Edition

It has been a spring season jam packed with watching sports with Dad. From hockey playoffs and multiple weekend Jays’ series on TV, to driving to the local ballpark on Tuesday night for a new season of t-ball.  A former softball coach for the village where I grew up, my 82-year-old Dad (Lloyd) experiences pure joy watching children conquering the whiff of the t-ball post.

Simple pleasures. With my dad.

Are you aware of the research on Passive Sports Engagement (“PSE”)?

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Relentless RoundUp - 18th Edition

We have smart insoles. Smart knees. Self-driven neurological assessments. 3D printed pancreatic tissue. Custom small batch manufacturing. Music as Medicine.

We have precision healthcare. We are monitoring remotely. We are changing behaviour.

We have true A.I. & M.L. We have software as a medical device (SaMD), recovery curves, new technology add on payments (NTAP), and a Breakthrough Designation hat trick.

We have more than 300 filed and/or issued patents. We have know-how.

We have Deloitte’s #1 Technology Fast 50 Company to Watch. We have a pair of Life Sciences BC winners for Medical/Digital Health Company of the year. We have a LSBC Growth Stage Life Sciences Company of the Year.

We have an Indigenous health collaboration.

We are directly delivering on SDG#3 (SDG 3.4 to be precise).

We have happiness metrics.

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Relentless RoundUp - JPM23 Edition

Ah, January. A month that can be counted on to bring the blues to some, the intention to reset and refresh to others. It is also the month that, for the past three decades, marks the annual pilgrimage of healthcare investors, ventures, and operators as they descend on San Francisco, affectionately known for many years as “JP Morgan Week”.

For those in the finance and business building part of the healthcare industry, it is an opportunity to refresh connections with colleagues spread across the globe, to fine tune the skill of coordinating three breakfast meetings that don’t overlap, to meet entrepreneurs dedicated to innovation in healthcare, and with the help of the now infamous ‘Novateur mobile app’, secure invites to the hottest evening socials.

 It is an exhilarating and exhausting few days, but with practice in schedule optimization, typically translates to rewarding networking, competitive insights and priming of the pipeline for new investments – all true of my experience this year.

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Relentless RoundUp - Autumn Notes Edition

As we transition into shorter days, darker evenings, and a whack of wet and chilly weather we most definitely need to identify our motivators for movement. For me, at this time of year I am always motivated to get outside and witness the leaves and light changing. Why do the vibrant autumn colours surrounding my childhood home touch my soul? Nostalgia? Comfort?

And then just to be certain that there is balance in the day, wicked winds and rain pummel the trees and we are now left with gorgeous piles of ruby and orange carpets for a lawn. Perfect bunches of leaves to kick, throw in the air or roll around in. Or rake.

I am jolted back to a sense of wonder when watching the neighbourhood kids play in the foliage – roll, run, jump, pitch, and play. What is the adult equivalent to such inspiration? What is your motivation to move?

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Relentless RoundUp - Summer Edition

Health innovators have been unveiling the layers of possibilities for personalized care since the human genome was first sequenced. Beginning on October 1st, 1990, and completed in April 2003, the Human Genome Project gave us the ability, for the first time, to read nature’s complete genetic blueprint for building a human being. A patient. It took more than a dozen years!

Health investors, we are a patient people. We are innately patient, I believe, because we know that on the other side of discovery, long capital raising cycles, clinical failures, clinical triumph, the relentless pursuit of data insights, and a dedication to optimizing enabling technology for care, there will be improved health outcomes. That is a powerful motivating force.

Healthcare and life science investors – we are here for the long haul. We shall continue hunting for new tech – crushing cycle, frothy cycle, down cycle, up cycle.

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Relentless RoundUp - 14th Edition

February. I love the synchrony of having both Valentine’s Day and Family Day in the same month as Heart Month.

As we find pandemic friendly ways to show love to our Valentines and our families, let’s show lots of love to our beating hearts.

February is Heart Month

Team Relentless has big feelings about preventative health. When it comes to heart disease, prevention starts with knowing your risk. As outlined by Heart & Stroke, “nine in ten Canadians have at least one risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Almost 80% of premature heart disease and stroke can be prevented through healthy behaviours.”

Did you know? The number one cause of premature death for women in Canada is heart disease and stroke? That is a devastating fact.

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Relentless RoundUp - 13th Edition

It is extraordinary to reflect on the fact that 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin. Canadians Banting and Best first extracted insulin from the pancreas of one dog to give to another dog with severe diabetes. The extended life of the diabetic dog was the evidence needed to fuel development of more purified forms, the ultimate life-saving product used to this day by Type 1 diabetics and worthy of the first Nobel prize awarded to a Canadian.

While insulin has not been a cure. It has been a life saver.

Did You Know That November is Diabetes Awareness Month Across the Globe?

As we approach the end of November, let’s take a beat and ensure we understand more about diabetes. With approximately one in three North Americans living with diabetes or pre-diabetes, chances are very high a friend or loved one has some form of this chronic condition.

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Relentless RoundUp - Special Edition

If knees could talk, what would they say?

“Hello. Are you there? Why did you take so few steps today? Something wrong? Anything I can do to motivate you to get up off the couch today?”

Alternatively, “wait a hot minute, our cadence is snappy! Keep it up.”

Well, the knees can “talk” and the FDA likes what they have to say. FDA approval for the first, smart orthopedic product worldwide was granted on August 27th to Vancouver’s very own Canary Medical.

Whether it is tracking acute care, post-surgical recovery, or the long-term monitoring of a total knee replacement, Canary Medical has developed technology that will forever change the relationship between patient and doctor. And it just so happens that Canary is the Relentless Venture Fund’s inaugural investment. As an extra special edition of the Relentless RoundUp, we dig deep to reveal the impact the world’s first and only smart orthopedic implant approved by the FDA will have on med tech investing, remote patient monitoring and improved health outcomes. Buckle up.

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Relentless Roundup - 11th Edition

I feel a reawakening of the spirit. And a deep sense of relief.

I also have a profound amount of gratitude for all the frontline healthcare workers and essential service providers that literally put their own lives at risk every single day for the rest of us as the world navigated the unfamiliar these past sixteen months.

How about you? What are your top-line feelings?

If there is one undeniable positive outcome of the pandemic it is that people have been discussing mental health openly and often; we’ve allowed ourselves to be vulnerable with one another. We have also seen how Covid has exacerbated historic and persistent inequalities. While it is a shared global tragedy, it is not a shared experience, and we must recognize the mental health implications of these experiences show up differently in our communities.

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Relentless RoundUp – April First Edition

The pandemic has played tricks on our sense of time. On our sense of what is safe, what is normal and what is predictable. While we can’t jump to the left, and step to the right to enter a collective time warp that takes us back to pre-pandemic, we most certainly can focus on the positives and move forward. Let’s start with the sun is up earlier. And at least in Vancouver, daffodils are everywhere, and cherry blossoms are bursting!

In the 2020 Annual Report for the Relentless Venture Fund we took time to celebrate the global accomplishment of vaccine development. We should all be pausing to celebrate the resounding success and international coordination that catalyzed expedited approval. Full stop.

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Relentless RoundUp - 9th Edition

Summer is in the rearview mirror, while COVID-19 continues to pelt our collective windshield.

Friends are developing pickle ball elbow (like tennis elbow, but due to a vigorous pickle ball commitment).

Others are trying to figure out their bubble; from social bubbles to sport bubbles to study bubbles to tech bubble (or not).

These are unusual times.

A COVID-19 PORTFOLIO

As a growing stream of investors chase investments in pandemic specific technology solutions - including remote patient monitoring (RPM) and telemedicine – the Relentless portfolio has the proverbial head start. We never intended to build a portfolio of investments to address a global pandemic, yet here we are.

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Relentless RoundUp - 8th Edition

Were you ever a member of a 4-H Club? Chances are high if you grew up in a rural community as I did.
My strong preference was to participate in the 4-H calf club, and that is not a reference to a club that could develop my leg strength, but the one that would develop my skills in raising of livestock and understanding of animal health.

Alas, I was redirected to the homemakers’ club to learn how to cook at the age of 12, and as such am well versed in the art of bread making. Thus, I have resisted the urge to feed a sourdough starter, master ‘no knead’ bread, or board the banana bread bandwagon.
So, if not baking arts, what new positive behaviour changes have you made during your self-isolation time?

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Relentless RoundUp - Special Edition

In this special edition of the Relentless RoundUp, I want to share some thoughts about RESILIENCE.

While the pandemic we are surrounded by is unprecedented, I trust that each of you has bounced back from devastating experiences – potentially similar economic loss (recall the crashes of 2000 and 2008?), job loss or possibly even health scares. You bounced back. The markets bounced back. And in the absence of a full bounce back, you have developed strategies to deal with your adjusted reality.

Need further reassurance about your potential to handle the current state?

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The Relentless RoundUp - Holiday Edition

I admit, as a country girl, I pine for the days of the Sears Christmas Catalogue arriving in the mailbox. The gleeful anticipation of ‘dog-earing’ pages in the hope that Mom, or Santa’s elves, would take notice.

If Santa could deliver one magical gift to you this year, what would it be?

As many of us sign off for a few days to spend with friends and family, I want to challenge you to think about the seniors in your universe.

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The Relentless RoundUp - 5th Edition

From popular media, to health ministry statements through to scientific conferences, we often hear references to the ‘engaged patient.’

Well I would like to emphasize, in addition to the engaged patient, is the potential for the engaged individual. While engaged patients are better able to make informed decisions about their care options, the engaged individual can activate around lifestyle choices that mitigate health risks. 

Engagement is empowering.

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