Sunnybrook is seeking a solution to improve both patient and provider experience for breast-conserving surgery localization.  The solution will address the potential for an alternative option to wired-guided localization (WGL) and radioactive seed localization (RSL) for preoperative localization of breast lesions in patients eligible for breast-conserving surgery.

Sunnybrook is posting this Call for Innovation to seek out qualified Ontario* companies who can meet the desired outcomes. Sunnybrook and CAN Health reserves the right to not move forward with this project at its full discretion and in particular if there are no qualified Ontario companies that can reasonably meet the desired outcomes.

*Business must be registered in Ontario in order to qualify for this project.

This opportunity is closed.
Problem Statement and Objective(s)

In Canada, the most common options for preoperative localization of breast lesions are wired-guided localization (WGL) and radioactive seed localization (RSL). However, both options have particular drawbacks, including sub-optimal patient experience, inaccuracy, and utilization aspects that increase the logistic and financial burden on healthcare organizations.

Sunnybrook is seeking input from Canadian industry players who may have a cost-saving or -effective solution to improve both patient and provider experience for breast-conserving surgery localization.

Objectives:

  1. Better Health Outcomes: decrease complexity and unforeseen events for BCS localization such as patient discomfort, possible migration of implanted wiring, and potential difficulties in localizing target lesions.
  2. Improved Provider Experience.
  3. Improved Patient Experience.
  4. Acceptable budgetary impact determined by analysis.
Desired outcomes and considerations

Essential (mandatory) outcomes

The proposed solution must:

  • Provide better patient experience by: 
    • Reducing discomfort and anxiety in regards to lesion localization;
    • Improving convenience of lesion localization procedure and appointments.
  • Improve clinician experience by improving:
    • Provider satisfaction by reducing unforeseen events such as difficulties in localizing target lesions.
    • Reliability – no interference with standard OR equipment and tools. Feedback is specific to the localization device (no spurious, non-specific feedback).
    • Ease of use – No requirement to re-calibrate during cases responsive and provides specific feedback. No cross-talk between the detection of a sentinel lymph node tracer and localization of the marker.
    • Accuracy in measuring the distance from the probe to marker.
    • Decouple Radiology & Surgery.
  • Improve clinical workflow efficiency by:
    • Improving capacity and decreasing resource utilization in radiology;
    • Alleviate challenges of coordination between multi-disciplinary groups created by current options. 
  • Integrate into current clinical workflow with minimal change management required.

Additional outcomes

  • Non-radioactive alternative to wire-free localization that enables the benefits of wire-free localization, while eliminating the administrative burden and risks associated with RSL.
  • Optimize introduction and adoption of new technology by providing operations consultancy services to reduce wait times and increase the capacity of clinical program.

The maximum duration for a project resulting from this Challenge is: 9 months

Background and context

Female breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the world. However, both wire-guided localization and radioactive seed localization add a significant burden in terms of operations inefficiencies, complexity, unforeseen events, and financial burdens. On post-COVID-19 recovery, there will be an influx of patients challenging the current screening capacity and an expected increase of breast cancer surgical procedures. The identified challenges of the new normal with COVID-19 are prompting all healthcare organizations to re-invent breast-conserving programs that increase their efficiency and capacity to deliver timely care to Canadians while also alleviating the administration/coordination burden on care teams. Sunnybrook would like to transition to a non-radioactive alternative to wire-free localization that enables the benefits of wire-free localization while eliminating the administrative burden and risks associated with RSL.

This opportunity is closed.