About Vice-Principal ResearchIn 2021 during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Prameet Sheth, Director of Microbiology at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, had an overwhelming task to carry out – manage and track COVID tests – on top of the usual number of microbiology tests. At the time the Microbiology laboratory was performing between 1000 - 1500 tests per day, seven days a week, and they had just started the Infectious Disease Sequencing (IDS) lab that was sequencing COVID samples to track what strains of COVID were spreading in Southeastern Ontario.
The sheer volume of data, combined with the challenge of mitigating contamination issues and performing the tests in a timely fashion meant the team barely had time to appreciate the gravity of the data before more data was generated and everything changed again. This challenge underscored the need for a more streamlined approach.
As Dr. Sheth puts it, “The Microbiology and the IDS labs were generating so much data that the team barely had time to appreciate what was happening before things changed again.”
Traditional methods of tracking results in Microbiology, like Excel sheets and retrospective data pulls, were time-consuming, provided no real-time analysis and sometimes occurred months after the fact making them largely useless for correcting or managing problems. This was the catalyst for the development of an innovative platform, which in 2024, may revolutionize laboratory operations.
The software technology developed as a collaborative effort between Dr. Prameet Sheth, Dr. Henry Wong, and Dr. Calvin Sjaarda in collaboration with Queen’s Centre for Advanced Computing (Dr. Amal Khalil, Dr. Hung Tam and Paige Beddoe), is the Live Operational Laboratory Analytics (LOLA) platform, a sophisticated metrics dashboard. LOLA provides real-time analysis and predictive insights into lab metrics and patient results. Once all of the COVID data had been inputted into the system, the team expanded the platform to include metrics on other key aspects of microbiology including tracking blood cultures (sepsis) and respiratory infections in the hospital. The platform can monitor over 200 metrics including contamination rates, turnaround times, and testing capacities. It can also provide updates on changes in epidemiology and emergence of viruses as well as improve laboratory efficiency, which positively impacts patient care.
And the platform is on the verge of market launch, thanks to the efforts of the Queen’s University Foundry Program, a collaborative initiative between Queen’s Partnerships and Innovation (QPI) and the Dunin-Deshpande Queen's Innovation Centre (DDQIC), and a dedicated team of entrepreneurial students.
The Foundry Program, which began with the 2017 Queen’s Innovation Centre Summer Initiative (QICSI) cohort, connects entrepreneurial students with cutting-edge research-based intellectual property (IP) through a licensing framework overseen by QPI.
Through the Foundry Program, QPI pitches promising projects to student teams, who then express their interest and engage with researchers under non-disclosure agreements to explore the potential of various inventions. Once a proposal is approved, the students are granted short-term access to develop the technology, with the opportunity to license rights to the IP and establish a new company to commercialize the innovation.
Other Foundry program companies from years past that have found success through the licensing of Queen’s University researchers’ IP include RockMass and Spectra Plasmonics.
“The companies we’ve seen formed through the Foundry Program is a great example of how research can evolve from a lab setting to be developed and commercialized through a startup to bring a real product or service to market,” says Dr. Michael Wells, a Partnerships Development Officer with QPI who has been working with Dr. Sheth on both LOLA as well as his novel protease treatment for Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) infections.
Monarch Informatics is the 2024 QICSI team that formed to spearhead the commercialization of LOLA. In May 2024, Dr. Sheth presented LOLA to the QICSI students, sparking interest and enthusiasm among the team members.
“We heard Dr. Sheth’s presentation at the start of the 2024 QICSI program and saw a real opportunity,” says Marcus Wright-Smith, Monarch Informatics’ Chief Financial Officer (CFO). “Dr. Sheth has been using the platform for over two years in the Kingston Health Sciences Centre, proving that the technology can produce real efficiency gains and costs savings. Our team believes we can commercialize the platform by conducting a pilot program before fully launching a go-to-market push in April of 2026.”
“My hope is that LOLA’s capabilities will transform the way laboratories operate,” says Dr. Sheth. “By sending real-time alerts when metrics surpass critical thresholds and providing predictive analytics, LOLA will not only help with immediate decision-making but also in long-term planning, efficiency and mitigating errors that are often discovered late and negatively influence patient outcomes.”
This proactive approach can save valuable time for lab technicians and reduce operational costs for hospitals. But the potential benefits of LOLA extend beyond just improving laboratory efficiency; it represents a significant step forward in leveraging data to enhance patient care and reducing the lab workers’ cognitive load.
On August 15, 2024, the Monarch Informatics team took to the stage for the QICSI Summer Pitch Competition to make their case for a piece of a $50,000 funding. With an impressive presentation, Monarch Informatics took home the top prize, with $20,000 in funding, which will help the team upgrade the platform’s readiness level for the pilot launch to commence in April 2025.
With five champions interested in LOLA’s pilot launch in April 2025 (Health Sciences Horizon Sante-Nord, Kingston Health Sciences Centre, Scarborough Health Network, Texas Health Resources, and Unity Health Toronto), the team is well-positioned to address the pressing challenges faced by hospital labs across North America.
If you are a Queen’s researcher with IP that could be patented and commercialized, or if you would like to learn more about the Foundry program, please visit our Foundry Program page and/or reach out to QPI to be connected with one of our Partnerships Development Officers.