Calgary’s SnapDx Wins Award, Slated to Represent Canada at Innovation Academy in Switzerland

Recently out of stealth mode, Calgary-based mHealth startup SnapDx won both the “Audience Choice Award” and overall first place at the recent W21C Innovation Academy.

The startup beat 13 other healthcare startups to win the top prize of $10,000. It also earned a spot to represent Canada at the Global Innovation Academy in Switzerland next year. Orpyx and Medeo took second and third place.

If you’re unfamiliar, The W21C Innovation Academy is a business pitch competition in partnership with Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the University of Pretoria, and the University of Geneva, where startups with the potential to stimulate significant change related to innovations in health care and health systems delivery are showcased. The winners of each Innovation Academy from different countries are sent to compete at the Global Innovation Academy.

Founded by Startup Calgary’s cofounder and chairman, Hisham Al-Shurafa, and two University of Calgary resident-physicians, Dr. Rahul Mehta (Internal Medicine) and Dr. Aravind Ganesh (Neurology), SnapDx provides interactive, visual mobile applications that help patients and practitioners to quickly access medical knowledge without having to scroll through lots of text. It generates visualizations personalized to the patient’s medical history so that doctors and patients can make informed decisions right at the appointment, based on the highest-quality evidence and best practices.

“The basic problem we’re solving is that physicians and patients today are overwhelmed with too much information and because of that, one in two patients do not even get appropriate care according to medical guidelines. We’re fixing that and it looks like people like our approach,” explains Al-Shurafa, SnapDx’s chief executive officer.