A long-time member of TMTA, BRYTECH Inc.. develops, designs, and manufactures assistive devices for individuals who are either blind, sight-impaired or disabled in another way. Headed by founder and CEO Earl Bryenton, the company is headquartered in the Ottawa Business Park  where I met with the owner on a particularly cold day in February 2010.

An unassuming man casually attired in an open shirt and a sleeveless plush jacket, Earl meets me at the door of Brytech’s foyer before his receptionist even has time to greet me.

I am quickly ushered into the company’s board room where BRYTECH’s inventions have been gathered for me to see., Earl is first and foremost an engineer. He wastes little time with niceties and gets down to the task at hand within seconds of our having sat down.

I try my usual ploy. Plying him with a few compliments about his company and its accomplishments, I tell him I often start interviews by first exploring the owner’s life prior to the creation of his company. I tell him I want to know the man first. Then, we’ll get around to his vision and how it is manifested. Earl listens to me politely and nods in the right places but, in his own quiet way, it is clear that he will have none of it. He’s just itching to talk to me about his inventions and how they are changing the world.

I barely have time to establish that he graduated in engineering from UNB in 1953 and did further studies at Ottawa U and Carleton. , Earl’s already summarizing his career at Bell Northern Laboratories by saying that he was part of a team that developed a device which was then known as the “VisualEar”. Developed in 1975, the device would be connected telephones to transmit text for deaf or hearing impaired individuals. While the device was useful, the need for it was supplanted by the advent of the internet which could accomplish the same job at a fraction of the cost.  

Without dwelling on any further details about his time at BNR labs, Earl jumps to 1982 at which points he retired from his job and created Brytech.

One of the company’s first products was a Simulated Speech Generator. As its name indicates, the machine could simulate speech by generating syllables that approximated human speech patterns.

At first BRYTECH worked on surveillance devices for the Department of External Affairs but Earl hesitates to talk about about those inventions because most of this work was classified. He did however mention that BryTech worked on a device which it called the “Man down”. Installed in remote outposts on Canada’s border, the device could monitor when a border guard was disabled and it would trigger an alarm to indicate that this something improper had occurred.

Another of Brytech’s first inventions was intended for the military. It involved a device that monitored pilots of fighter planes. The device was created to detect when a pilot blacks out while flying a plane. It accomplished this by monitoring rapid changes in the blood pressure going from the brain to the pilot’s limbs. It did so by using fibre optic cables wrapped around the pilot’s limbs.

The next device BryTech worked on was called the “Sensory Six”. Designed to enhance mobility, the device allowed a blind person to walk around safely in his/her home (or even on the street) by wearing ultrasonic glasses. Introduced in 1987 with international sales that encountered competition for China later after 1995.

Work on the ultrasonic glasses lead to the development of a bank note reader in 1989, a device we will talk about later on this text.

The next Brytech product used similar fibre optics to monitor infants and babies. This occurred back in the 1980’s when a lot of attention was given to the occurrence of crib deaths [SIDS].. Since such deaths appeared to be related to the way an infant was located in its crib, the device was oriented to monitoring the child’s orientation in the crib and any movements which might occur while the child was still in the crib. The R&D for this project was done in collaboration with CHEO (the Children’s Hospitals of Eastern Ontario).

Development of a device to monitor crib deaths lead Brytech to broaden its research into the monitoring of a patient of any age. This evolved into developing a device that would wirelessly monitor patients thus allowing them to enjoy greater mobility and freedom of movement.

First application occurred in 2007-2008 when mobility was made possible through hooking the device to a WiFi system for clinical trials at the Ottawa General Hospital. Now known as the RPM (Remote Physiology Monitoring System), the device has the capabilities of a bedside vital signs monitor but the size and portability of a telemetry transmitter. Alarm thresholds can be set for any condition or combination of conditions to reduce false alarms. These alerts can sound on the patient, at the central station and on a mobile device, as required.

The RPM allows healthcare professionals to save time because it is convenient enough to remain with the patient and relay 5 of their vital signs wirelessly to a central station, bedside display, PDA or Blackberry. The devices reduces  the task of removing sensors whenever the patient needs to be moved and be alerted of alarm conditions through a mobile device.

The RPM system provides mobility in a hospital setting or a nursing centre. The device allows hospitals to move patients from the ICU to other less intensive (and less costly) facilities while still monitoring their vital signs. The next goal is to relocate patients from a medical facility to their own home.

Using Blue Tooth technology, the device can now be connected to a patient’s cell phone. The cell phone can then be connected to a hospital or nursing centre which receives intermitent signals from the device and gets an alarm if the patients’ vital signs indicate that something is awry. 

The RPM can be set up to monitor any number of vital signs such as a patient’s respiration, ECG, temperature, blood pressure, oxygen saturation  etc. This data is then transmited to a nursing centre or hospital. Transmission is not continuous since that would tie up phone lines unnecessarily but a signal can be set up to do out at every 30 seconds which leaves a circuit open and available while still providing adequate monitoring. If any fluctuation occurs, an alarm is triggered and appropriate action can be taken.

The device is presently being evaluated in applications with low-risk post-op patients. A 2nd level of application will be to use the device with patients who have chronic conditions but are well enough to go home.

Health Canada approval was required for the device for manufacture in Canada. As is the case with most manufacturers of health-related devices, certification is a key part of the manufacturing process. Health Canada approval is required for most Brytech devices. FDA approval is of course required for devices intended for export to the US. Since the company has not yet attempted to export its devices to Europe, getting the CE mark has not yet been an issue. 

Brytech’s goal is to first get approval in Canada and then the  USA first then start focusing on other export markets.

Not all BryTech’s inventions deal with health care.. Some are intended to help people deal with simple everyday needs such as knowing the denomination of bank notes or the colour of an object or item of clothing. Having been involved with the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind), as a volunteer, Earl knew first hand that there was a great need for devices to assist blind and sight impaired individuals to live fuller lives.

This device enables a blind person to identify the currency and denomination of paper money by simply inserting it a reader. The machine scans the bill and identifies it by voice or tactile.. It can recognize currencies from Canada and the US. .  

While identifying the colour of one’s clothing is a challenge that most of us do without even thinking about it, doing so is a challenge for blind or sight impaired individuals. Which is why BryTech came up with a device it calls the “Colour Teller” in 2003.

Designed specifically for blind and visually impaired individuals, the tiny device identifies the colour of just about any object on which it is placed. All one has to do is to place the device on the item in question, press a button and wait for the computerized voice to state what is the predominant colour in that item.

The Colour Teller is being marketed internationally and there has been quite a lot of interest in it . The company even got a phone call from muscian Stevie Wonder. He wanted one for his own use.

Recent improvements to the Color Teller allow it to more accurately and consistently determine colours and shades. It also has an ability to tell whether a light is on or off. Its single button operation is easy to use, always ready and never needs to be switched off. Color Teller announces all the common colors, plus many tints and shades like pink, pale blue-green, dark brown and vivid yellow. It is 6 inches long, about 3 ounces and is very durable. Color Teller allows you to set up the unit to suit your needs. It has three volume levels, English, French and Spanish language selection, two levels of color announcement detail and operates with the single press of a button.

Brytech does the design, development and limited manufacturing of all its inventions. The Ottawa plant handles small volume orders such as units of 500 to 1,000. Larger orders are manufactured in,Toronto,Montreal,Peterborough and Carleton Place. All work done must meet ISO standards 13485.

Once we had covered all of the company’s inventions, I was curious to find out more about the man behind the machines. Creating highly sophisticated devices from scratch is not easy. Nor is it financially rewarding, at least initially.

I wondered out loud what has motivated Earl and kept him going day after day over the months and years of research, development and testing. 

“It seems that every time I turn around I see yet another medical facility being built  or expanded in a major way... In the Ottawa area alone, half a  billion dollars was spent on hospital expansion in 2009. And I have no doubt that the figures for 2010 will show yet another significant increase. We simply cannot continue as we have doing with more hospital beds!

“At this point,” says Earl, “from 18 to 20% of hospital beds are occupied by individuals with chronic diseases which are not life-threatening but require constant monitoring. The outcome is that our healthcare system is working very hard but not really progressing.”

Warning that the situation can only get worse as boomers begin to retire, Earl explains that the system has to tackle health-related challenges in a different way. For instance, at this point, almost every incident or ailment is initially treated as a potential major occurrence. The outcome is that individuals are frequently turned into patients and parked in a hospital bed. Not only do all these beds take up expensive real estate and precious man-hours, they often expose patients to all kinds of risks such as cross-infections and surgical mishaps. 

“We need to rethink our approach. For instance, relatively few people actually show up at their doctor in dire need of immediate intensive care. Granted, many have conditions that could lead to serious impairment if left untreated, but that does not mean that they should be hospitalized right away, if ever.” 

Rather than turning ailments into reasons to incarcerate people in hospitals, we need to find ways to monitor their condition from home and provide them with simple, inexpensive ways of helping them to get better without hospitalization and surgical interventions and costly post-operative care.

This is where devices such as the RPM come into the picture. More devices of this type are urgently needed to carry out some kind of triage which would allow nurse practitioners to sort out which patients need serious care and the attention of a doctor and which patients have minor ailments that can be handled on the spot or monitored from home.

The way Earl sees it, the expanding role of nurse practitioners is key to reducing or at least containing skyrocketing costs and devices like the RPM are an essential component of a new approach to care. Moving patients from a $1,200 a day hospital facility to a nursing centre which might cost $200 a day or less  not only makes financial sense, it is also far more likely to lead to healing. And with further development of remote monitoring devices, patients will soon be able to go to their own homes. BryTech is trying to work with LIHNs and others  to determine how that can be done.

As far as Earl is concerned, the way Canada’s healthcare system is structured is an impediment to R&D and improvement because each individual province or territory is responsible for its own health care.. This results in health care systems focused on carrying on with the way things are at present. The way Earl sees it, the Federal government, should take a more active role in healthcare. There would be a greater likelihood that more money would be spent on anticipating long term developments, demographic shifts. This would, in turn, result in more money and efforts being invested in R&D. and improving the way health care is provided.

Research is the most promising approach since the focus is on developing ways of cutting costs and simplifying care. This  would enable nurses to handle more patients and enable patients to take care of themselves  in their own homes or at least in lower cost settings than full service hospitals.

This text is taken from an article written by Marcel Lafleur and published in the 2010 edition of BioSpheres magazine.