A breath-based test for infectious diseases that offers a less invasive alternative to nasal swabs is among eight innovations awarded prizes at the 2026 涩里番 Clinical Innovation Competition (CLIC).
Hosted by 涩里番鈥檚 Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences鈥� Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning, CLIC helps members of its community bring startups to life through funding, mentorship and clinical access.
Rethinking infection detection
Respiratory diseases spread mainly through the air we exhale. The team behind AnemoSwab developed a small device that uses a person鈥檚 breath to detect infection.
AnemoSwab works by having a person blow into a small mouthpiece, where 3D鈥憄rinted channels capture particles from the breath to form a sample in a device about the size of a fingernail. It is less invasive than a nasal test and can also measure how much virus a person is breathing out, offering a better sense of how infectious they may be.
鈥淭he COVID-19 pandemic reminded us of the importance of early detection and understanding how diseases spread,鈥� said Yonatan Morocz, a PhD candidate who developed the project with David Juncker, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at 涩里番.
鈥淭oday, that urgency feels even greater, with ongoing measles outbreaks, hantavirus, tuberculosis worldwide and the risk of future pandemics,鈥� he said.
The team received $4,000, with up to $16,000 available in matching funds through the聽MI4 Innovation Prize,聽and will soon test the device in a Quebec clinical study tracking influenza infection over time.
Two new prizes
This year, CLIC introduced two new awards reflecting evolving health priorities.
- The Antimicrobial Resistance Innovation Prize聽recognizes solutions that help combat drug-resistant infections. The inaugural winner, RobAST,聽is developing a system to determine which antibiotics will work against an infection. It aims to deliver results in about an hour at low cost, helping doctors choose the right treatment quickly. (Prof. Sara Mahshid, Roozbeh Siavash Moakhar, Sripadh Guptha Yedire, Tamer Abdelsalam Abdelfatah Abdelwahab)
- The Vitruvius Launchpad Prize聽supports early-stage digital health innovations with strong real-world potential. The first recipient, A-Levo, is building a wearable device for people with Parkinson鈥檚 disease that continuously tracks medication levels and symptoms, helping move beyond decades of trial-and-error dosing. (Jung Hao Cau, Julianna Farias, Siqi Mi, William Prato-Deriet, Syphax Ramdani, Lucy Wiggers)
The other winners are:
- Hakim Family Innovation Prize聽鈥� Ubiqui-Dx, offering a cartridge-based io-PTH test聽used in treatment of Primary hyperparathyroidism (Geunyong Kim, Antti Virtanen, Paul Chapman, Prof. David Juncker)
- Marika Zelenka Roy Innovation Prize聽鈥� AeroCardia, makers of a portable CardioPulmonary monitoring system (Matthew Behr, Dr. Abhinav Sharma)
- Smart & Biggar Innovation Prize聽鈥� Rebrief, a dentistry-specific ambient clinical intelligence platform聽(Kevin Zhou, DDS; Qin Xiang Ng, PhD)
- Raab Student Innovation Prize聽鈥� OpenDx, an open-access, comprehensive clinical simulation platform (Aymen Sahal, Andrei Khramtsov, Prof. Philippe Archambault)
- Marika Zelenka Roy Simnovation Prize聽鈥� Tavantech, which offers a VR-based simulator that helps train users of manual wheelchairs, enhancing mobility and preventing injuries (Salman Nourbakhsh, Hamza Bou-ouhrich, Prof. Philippe Archambault)
For more information, visit the聽CLIC website.
Photo: David Juncker, (centre) and Yonatan Morocz (right), members of the AnemoSwab team, accept the MI4 Innovation Prize from Professor Marcel Behr from the Division of Infectious Diseases
