Advertisement

Revolutionary health app by Canadian doctor on the brink of helping space missions

Click to play video: 'Canadian ER doctor designs ‘revolutionary’ app that dramatically improves patient care'
Canadian ER doctor designs ‘revolutionary’ app that dramatically improves patient care
WATCH: An app designed by an emergency room doctor in Quebec is dramatically improving patient care. As Gloria Henriquez reports, the app is a finalist in the Canadian Space Agency Deep Space Healthcare Challenge, a competition to find technologies that can improve health care in remote areas and during deep-space missions – May 20, 2023

An app designed by a doctor at Charles-Lemoyne hospital in Montreal is dramatically improving patient care.

Now, its revolutionary technology is on the brink of saving lives on Earth and beyond as a finalist in the Canadian Space Agency’s Deep Space Healthcare Challenge, a competition to find technologies that can improve patient care in remote areas and during deep-space missions.

The EZResus app, created by emergency physician Frédéric Lemaire, helps doctors deal with the critical first hour of resuscitation when there’s little room for maneuver or for error.

Click to play video: 'NASA announces Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build 2nd moon lander'
NASA announces Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build 2nd moon lander

“It’s super tough in the heat of the moment to do absolutely no mistakes,” Lemaire said.

Story continues below advertisement

With EzResus, health practitioners no longer have to consult books, the internet and then make complicated calculations many times over on a piece of paper.

Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday.

Get weekly health news

Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday.
By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

The app has all the tools needed to figure out appropriate emergency treatment for patients in the same place.

“We’re talking about drug dosing, equipment selection, some checklists for procedures, just to offload our brains so we can focus on the patient,” Lemaire said.

Click to play video: 'NASA video shows sizes of biggest black holes in space'
NASA video shows sizes of biggest black holes in space

The app is a non-profit venture. Charles-Lemoyne hospital foundation helped set it up by providing initial funding.

“My first impression came in one word: wow,” said Nathalie Boudreau, the foundation’s president and executive director. “It was absolutely amazing to see such a young doctor to come up with a project so original, so different.”

Story continues below advertisement

A team of volunteers has been working to input all the necessary information — from nurses, to pharmacists and emergency doctors like Jean-François Couture.

“It’s really just a great tool that helps the whole team and really rapidly you can have reliable calculations,” Couture said.

There are now nearly 5,000 users in 29 different countries around the world, and if it were to win the competition, the app has the chance of improving care beyond the confines of planet Earth.

“It’s super, super exciting,” said Lemaire. “We get funding, then we get a chance to collaborate with the Canadian Space Agency, so it would give us the money and the leverage to make this dream happen, distribute the app as broadly as possible and maybe some day help an astronaut on the road to Mars.”

That’s Dr. Lemaire’s true final frontier.

Advertisement

Sponsored content

AdChoices