Erik Scheme Builds Connections to the Future of Medical Tech
FREDERICTON–Erik Scheme knows how to take a project from conception to reality. For the last two years he’s been doing just that for medical researchers and companies as the NB Innovation Research Chair in Medical Devices.
With roots at UNB as a former student, Scheme came back to work there in 2009 as a project engineer, then completed his PhD part-time before taking on his current role.
Scheme now helps New Brunswick companies get a leg up in the medical technologies sector. He says in this field, companies always have to be innovating and doing research and development towards the next product.
“Because there wasn’t much of a medical technology sector in the province, we took sort of an entrepreneurial approach and said we’re just going to go from the ground up,” Scheme said. “I’ve been working with existing companies in the province but also working with developing technologies in-house here as well to see if we can actually flip them into companies as well.”
Scheme says that to have true clusters of expertise, there has to be a foundation of collaboration between industry and academia. Having both ends in the loop allows everyone to focus on what they do best.
“Those of us that are doing research can be freed up to do the research questions. Industry can be freed up to do what they do best. It’s a matter of optimal resource allocation for the province,” Scheme said. “We are all so busy with our own research but I’ve been very cognizant of the fact that health research from the get-go has to be collaborative and interdisciplinary so we’ve really worked to build that interdisciplinary team.”
Though he gets to work on exciting projects every day, one of the more interesting ones for Scheme is one that’s straight out of science fiction. Scheme is involved with a partnership working towards a technology similar to Star Trek’s tricorder to be entered into the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition.
This project is a collaboration between Keith Brunt from Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick, Sohrad Lutchmedial from the New Brunswick Heart Centre and a company called Cloud DX. The prize will award $10 million dollars to the best device that can diagnose multiple conditions.
Scheme says much of the medical technologies focus in an aging province like New Brunswick is on elder care. He says that what’s needed to move the sector forward here is mobile health technology that will drive healthcare rather than just document it.
“We need to use technology to drive change in the healthcare system itself before we’ll really see a major difference,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to use that data in a proactive way. If we were able to flip the healthcare system, rather than being reactive, there’s be a cost savings of billions of dollars.”
This new way of using technology will allow practitioners to catch things that might go wrong rather than document them after the fact. This technology could become a reality in the form a “Smart Cane,” which Scheme is helping develop. This device monitors the user while they’re walking and communicates information about how much they’re leaning on the cane, their stability while they’re walking and while they’re standing. The idea is to take technologies or devices that people use every day and make them smart to take the guesswork out of symptoms.
“A lot of healthcare is subjective, so whether you go to a physiotherapist or you’re going to your doctor or to a surgeon, you’re explaining how you think you feel, which is subjective in itself,” Scheme says. “That gets portrayed across to whoever’s taking care of you and their interpretation is subjective. If you have a device, it’s going to measure the same thing every time.”
Scheme believes New Brunswick can take a leadership role in medical technologies in the same way it has with IT. He says being in a smaller place is an advantage when it comes to making connections and fostering collaboration.
“Sometimes as Maritimers we’re too humble, we don’t toot our own horns a lot … because we’re small we can be agile,” Scheme said. “We use the expression six degrees of separation and in New Brunswick it’s usually two, often one. When you’re talking about a field that requires strong integration and collaboration between people, that’s really a strength we need to play on.”
“The trick is we have to be nimble and we have to be adoptive. We can’t be scared of new technologies and also be a leader in that area. We have the population, we have the IT infrastructure, we have the expertise, we can do it, it’s just a matter of everyone getting together and acknowledging that we have that as a strength.”