Luxidea builds simple tools to solve complex problems

Calgary-based Luxidea was created to scale products for the research community. The company identifies solutions incubated in academic laboratories and develops them into tools for the greater ecosystem.

Co-founder and CEO Kamala Patel is a scientist and has been a professor at the University of Calgary since 1997. She studies chronic diseases and one of the tools she uses is advanced microscopes.

“Our current lead product is OptiSlides,” explained Patel, in a conversation with Calgary Tech Journal. “OptiSlides are diverse, sophisticated, real-world test slides created by scientists to test and validate the features of today’s advanced microscopes.”

The company was incorporated in May 2019 with a hands-on teaching tool to teach children about asthma. But the COVID pandemic disrupted that, and delayed product development by two years to 2021.

“Luxidea was created to take practical solutions that were developed in academic laboratories, the kind of solutions you wouldn’t be patenting per se but were already at the prototype stage because it was a solution for someone,” said Patel. “We identify those we think have market potential, move them, and develop them into products that will benefit the larger academic community.”

In 2022, Patel realized she needed some help and training, to dive deeper into the business world. She took a sabbatical from the university and ended up at the Alberta Catalyzer, joining the Traction program in May 2022. Then, she followed that up with the Velocity program that was on-site at Platform Calgary.

“It was such an amazing experience — the mentorship, the community, the networking,” said Patel. “When they started their Incubator program I applied to be part of that inaugural cohort.”

“Through the guidance and mentorship from the Incubator at Platform Calgary and others, our goal is to take one of our products from ideation to recurring revenues,” said Patel. “Ultimately we see Luxidea as an engine — an engine that will incubate and move products from the lab into the marketplace in a sequential way. Not just a one-and-done. But we see so many amazing ideas.”

OptiSlides is the company’s proof of principle. Patel sees the company’s future in which ideas that would otherwise only serve a few actually move into the marketplace. The benefits and profits would move back into these platform laboratories to enable the next discovery and research into those academic centres.

“Currently we’re working with the Cumming School of Medicine (at the University of Calgary),” Patel said, “but ultimately we would like to see ourselves as a platform for other resource laboratories across Canada.”