LiONS LAIR 2026: Health Founders Sweep the Podium

On September 24, Innovation Factory ran the 16th edition of LiONS LAIR at the Oakville Conference Centre, with more than 350 founders, investors and ecosystem leaders in the room and over $55,000 in cash and in-kind prizes on the table. The ten finalists came out of Founders Fast Track, Innovation Factory's training program, which worked with 40 companies this cycle before narrowing the field. Seven of the ten are building in health and life sciences.

What Stood Out

• Seven of the ten finalists are building in health and life sciences.
• The top two prizes went to medical devices, a kidney screening cup and a stroke thrombectomy system.
• Two finalists are based at McMaster Innovation Park in Hamilton.
• Every finalist came up through Innovation Factory's Founders Fast Track program.

The Winners

NewGen Health

NewGen Health took first place and the $30,000 top prize. The company is building an accessible urine-based screening device, paired with software, for rapid early detection of kidney disease. Its SmartCup analyzes samples at home alongside vital signs and feeds a care-coordination platform meant to support patients between clinic visits.

Chronic kidney disease, prenatal risk monitoring and cardio-metabolic care are its target use cases. The kit is still in development and has not yet been cleared by the FDA or licensed by Health Canada, which makes the win an early signal worth tracking through regulatory milestones.

Sensible Vascular

Sensible Vascular placed second and won $15,000. The company is building a fully integrated thrombectomy system designed to remove stroke-causing clots in a single pass.

Complete retrieval on the first attempt happens in fewer than half of procedures today, and it is strongly tied to better recovery and lower hemorrhage risk, so first-pass performance is the number Sensible Vascular is chasing.

TOMI Nutrition

TOMI placed third and won $7,500. The company makes clean, plant-based nutrition mixes for toddlers and kids, dairy-free and free of refined sugar, designed to stir into milk, smoothies and other everyday foods.

TOMI manufactures in Canada and sells direct to consumers with a subscription option.

Tiny Tube Bio

Tiny Tube Bio won the $2,500 People's Choice Award for its next-generation micropipette with a novel auto-calibrating sensor. It's a precision pipette control system aimed at one of the most-used and least-reinvented tools in any life sciences lab.

Meet the Finalists

HumanisRx

HumanisRx builds MedMonitor, a medication safety platform that helps group health insurers close gaps in adherence, safety and cost by reviewing drug claims data with pharmacist expertise. The team of pharmacists, doctors and technologists lists Canada Life, Desjardins and Wealthsimple Trade among its partners.

Gasner HealthTech

Gasner HealthTech makes the PhysioJaw, a patented handheld device for treating temporomandibular disorder (TMD). The clinical method behind it comes from co-founder Dr. Jon Gasner, a dentist with more than 15 years treating TMD, and the company holds five issued North American patents with seven pending. In its home-device pilot, the company reports a 70% average reduction in symptoms.

NexScale AI

NexScale built Chloe, an AI business partner for boutique fitness and wellness studios that spots member disengagement, sends personalized outreach and handles follow-ups. It already integrates with Mindbody, Mariana Tek, WellnessLiving and other studio management systems, and was also a top-three finalist at TiE Women 2026.

Remmen Brakes

Remmen Brakes is building NEMB, a nonlinear electro-mechanical brake-by-wire system that removes hydraulics from the vehicle entirely. The company says its system cuts braking reaction time by 50% and stopping distance from 100 km/h by more than three metres, at roughly 10% lower cost than hydraulic systems. Remmen was selected for MobilityXLab Batch 16 earlier this year.

LIVESENS

LIVESENS turns vehicles into mobile data-gathering platforms, using modular sensor suites and edge computing to capture traffic, environmental and geographic data in real time.

VascuBio Innovation

VascuBio is a McGill University spin-off working in bioprinting, bioreactor design and microfluidics, with platforms for vascularized tissue engineering and point-of-care diagnostics.

Why It Matters for the UpNext Network

Seven of the ten LiONS LAIR finalists are building in health and life sciences. The judges' top two picks were both medical devices, and the room's favourite was a lab tool. For a competition run out of Hamilton and Halton, that tracks with what the region is building around McMaster Innovation Park, home to two of this year's finalists.

The other thread is the pipeline. Every finalist came through Founders Fast Track, and the winner credited the program directly. Regional programs like this one surface companies well before they show up on national stages, which is where the UpNext network can be most useful to them.

Congratulations to Shannon Graszat, Gagan Kaur and the Innovation Factory team on sixteen years of LiONS LAIR.

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