We are using Fitbit smart watches to monitor people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to develop better tools for measuring disease progression. ALS, often referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, causes loss of strength in muscles of swallowing, breathing, and moving the arms and legs. Because ALS effects different parts of the body in each person, it is challenging to determine how quickly the disease is progressing and when treatment is helping. We will use movement and heart rate data collected from wearable devices to see if we can develop a machine learning model to monitor disease. Accurately monitoring ALS is important for developing new treatments and ensuring appropriate medical care.

We want to learn about strength training in youth with Cerebral Palsy. Can it help kids with CP meet their goals? Does it work when we provide it at a community recreation center instead of at a hospital?

This research study investigates adult-onset idiopathic dystonia, a neurological condition presenting with uncontrollable movements and twisted postures that may affect any part of the body. Adult-onset idiopathic dystonia reduces quality of life and may be invalidating for many patients. Unfortunately, we still know very little about what causes it and what makes it spread from one body region to another. In order to investigate the brain functions that are involved in dystonia, it is necessary to compare patients with the condition to people without it. For this reason, we are also approaching healthy individuals and patients with hemifacial spasm, a neurological condition that, even if it is not related to dystonia, is also treated with botox injections approximately every 3 months. Your participation is therefore very important to the success of this study as it will allow us to get a better understanding of this condition.

Contracture and spasticity both can impact movements in people who have an injury to their central nervous system. It is hard to know which one is contributes more to problems with movement. That contributes to making contracture and spasticity hard to treat. The Portable Spasticity Assessment Device (PSAD) can tell them apart, but it has not been used in clinics yet. The purpose of this study is to determine if the PSAD is useful and practical to use in the clinic. Participants will have their spasticity and contracture evaluated using the PSAD. It is very similar to the usual tests their clinician would do and involves recording their muscle activity with sticker on their muscles. Most assessments will occur when participants are seeing their clinicians. We will ask some participants to come in for an extra visit.

What is the real-world effectiveness of ubrogepant for migraine treatment in Canada? This is a prospective, observational, multicenter study to assess the effectiveness of ubrogepant for the acute treatment of migraine attacks in routine clinical practice in Canada. Approximately 167 adults (≥ 18 years of age) prescribed ubrogepant by their physician for the treatment of migraine will be enrolled. The overall study duration will be approximately 12 weeks and will consist of 2 site visits at baseline (enrollment) (Visit 1/Day 1) and Week 12 (Visit 4/end of study). Telephone visits will occur at Weeks 4 (Visit 2) and 8 (Visit 3).

The purpose of this research study is to find out if it is better to continue or discontinue statin drugs in people who had a brain hemorrhage while taking a statin drug. Statin drugs help prevent heart disease and ischemic stroke. Ischemic strokes are caused by a clot in a blood vessel that blocks blood flow to a part of the brain. However, statin drugs might increase the risk of having another brain hemorrhage in some people that already had a brain hemorrhage. Many physicians are not sure what to do about using statin drugs after a brain hemorrhage. They are not sure if it is better to continue or stop treatment with a statin drug after a brain hemorrhage. Some people may have an increased likelihood of having another brain hemorrhage while taking statin drugs. This may be due to people having certain genes. Genes are made up of DNA. DNA contains information that determines in part the traits, such as eye color, height, or disease risk, that are passed on from parent to child. Genes provide an instruction book for making proteins that make a person unique. This “uniqueness” includes a person’s diseases, response to drugs, or other problems. Having certain Apolipoprotein-E genes might make some people more likely to have another brain hemorrhage while taking statin drugs. This study is also being done to see if you have one of these Apolipoprotein-E genes and to examine whether having these genes actually increases the risk of brain hemorrhage in people who take statin drugs.

We need new tools to find and track brain diseases better, as people get older. Technology has improved, but it's still hard to examine small parts of the face and mouth, like the tongue. This project wants to fix that by making a way to follow how the tongue works during tests for brain health. We will use audio and video recordings from a computer to create accurate ways to track tongues. We will check these against existing tests to make sure they work well. The goal is to make a tool that doctors everywhere can use during tests. This could change how we check brain health by letting us track it automatically and from far away. It might help patients with brain problems get better results.

The EMBER Study (Exploring Mental health Barriers in Emergency Rooms) is interested in hearing about patient experiences in the emergency department at FMC (Foothills Medical Centre). We would like to hear from you if you accessed care in the emergency department at FMC within the last year. Participation would include a brief online survey (5-10 minutes).

The Family ICU Delirium Detection Instrument (FIDDI) is a tool to help families in the ICU recognize symptoms of delirium in their loved ones. We have translated this tool into French to make it accessible to French speakers. This study aims to validate the French translation of the FIDDI. We are recruiting native or bilingual French speakers to give feedback on the French translation in one-on-one interviews offered in French and English.

CaPRI is an observational study over a five-year period. The purpose of this study is to create a Registry and Database that furthers our understanding about Parkinson’s disease (PD) and related movement disorders. The information collected will help doctors, researchers, and patients better understand how PD affects patients over time and also enable researchers to develop tests to diagnose and improve treatments for people with PD. CaPRI also aims to facilitate contact between ongoing research studies and participants who wish to contribute to the development and improvement of treatments for PD. Recently, CaPRI has partnered with the Canadian Open Parkinson Network (C-OPN) to expand its research potential Canada wide.