Pearl Interactives, a new start-up housed at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital’s Bloorview Research Institute, has been awarded a NERVE prize by Ontario Brain Institute (OBI).

Photo credit: Gavin Brauer

“It’s an amazing display of confidence in our team and what we’re working to accomplish. This seed money will help us achieve our mission: to help kids, parents and clinicians turn motor skill exercises into play,” says Gavin Brauer, CEO of Pearl Interactives.

The new tech start-up housed in Holland Bloorview’s Bloorview Research Institute, develops accessible video games and apps that can be used at home or in clinics based on research co-designed by Dr. Elaine Biddiss and her PEARL Lab (Possibility Engineering and Research Lab) research team in partnership with families, clinicians and game developers.

This neurotech company is one of seven start-ups, each receiving $100,000 in funding through OBI’s NERVE Program (Neurotech Entrepreneurship to Validate Emerging Innovations). In addition to the funding, the Canadian entrepreneurs will also receive training opportunities, one-on-one mentorship and support to help kick-start and grow their new businesses.

“Ontario has established itself as a global leader in producing remarkable neurotech innovations that support people living with brain disorders,” said Dr. Tom Mikkelsen, President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Brain Institute. “Given the success that we witnessed for a decade through our provincial program, it has been our distinct pleasure to open up to entrepreneurs across the country. We have been blown away by the talent and innovation that we saw from Canadian applicants and are keen to collaborate with these seven gifted entrepreneurs.”

Making therapy fun

When children have a neuro-motor disability, they often require extensive and ongoing physical therapy. But once they have received treatment in clinics and are given exercises to do at home, it’s often difficult to motivate kids to keep up with their therapy. Pearl Interactives fills that void by developing inclusive video games to help kids target specific skills to improve their fine and gross motor functions through play. An added bonus: siblings, family and friends can also play along. Clinicians can also use these gaming platforms to turn therapy and motor-skill exercise into a fun activity for their clients and their families.

One of these video game platforms, Bootle Blast, has been used in more than 700 therapy sessions at Holland Bloorview since 2017 to help improve the motor skills of children with physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy and more recently those with acquired brain injury. Dr. Biddiss and her research team members Ajmal Khan and Alexander Hodge have worked with hospitals and health-care institutions in both urban and rural communities across Canada, United States, Costa Rica and France where kids with different abilities have trialed the game. And thanks to funding through the Spinal Cord Rehab Innovation Challenge run by Praxis Spinal Cord Institute and MaRS, the research team can now tailor the therapy game for youth with spinal cord injuries.

“My dream is to create technologies that go beyond the research lab and into the lives of families who can benefit the most,” says Dr. Biddiss, whose background is in engineering. “Congratulations to Gavin and his team for being recognized by the Ontario Brain Institute. I’m thrilled to see this technology positively impacting more families who may have limited access to low-cost therapies.”

The Future

Brauer says his start-up will invest the $100,000 prize money to grow their customer base so that more families can have access to this technology to help their children grow in the areas of motor skill development, fitness and music. He also has plans to make the product more widely accessible to families and health-care providers available through clinics and e-commerce within the next 12 months.

Learn more about the NERVE Prize announcement.

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