Photo caption: A client at Holland Bloorview uses brain computer interface technology drive a toy race car around a track.
20 Empowered Kids Ontario (EKO) member organizations will receive BCI technology and training in an initiative to spread and scale BCI programming across the province, as part of a historic $30 million gift from The Slaight Family Foundation. The initiative, called EmpowerBCI, is rolling out province-wide over five years thanks to a partnership between EKO and Holland Bloorview. It will provide children and youth with disabilities, including those with limited speech and movement, with groundbreaking technology developed at the Bloorview Research Institute in Dr. Tom Chau’s PRISM lab. The partnership will significantly increase access to BCI technology for clinicians, and the children they serve, across Ontario. For many of these children, BCI technology is one of the only ways they’re able to interact with their external environment, enabling them to participate more meaningfully, and fully, in the world around them.
“This is a game-changing investment that will influence clinical practice province-wide,” says Jennifer Churchill, President & CEO, Empowered Kids Ontario. “This technology can facilitate radical change, enabling kids to play and participate. Thanks to EmpowerBCI, clinicians across the province will have access to a new tool in their toolkit to help support kids whose movement and speech are limited.”
Since April 2025, four EKO member organizations across Ontario have received life-changing technology, which includes BCI headsets equipped with special electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors as well as software developed in-house at the Bloorview Research Institute. Clinicians and engineers from Holland Bloorview have provided training for clinicians at each of these centres to expand access to this technology and provide new ways for children with severe disabilities to connect with the world around them. To date the following sites have received BCI training and technology: John McGivney Children's Centre in Windsor, CHEO in Ottawa, Inspire Centre in Timmins and KidsInclusive Centre for Child & Youth Development, Kingston Health Sciences Centre in Kingston and in Brockville.
Susannah Van Damme is an occupational therapist and team lead of the clinical BCI program at Holland Bloorview in Toronto. She and her colleagues are responsible for training each of the 20 EKO member agencies as they come on board and she says the response to date has been overwhelmingly positive.
“There often isn’t a dry eye in the room the first time children, families and clinicians use this groundbreaking technology,” says Van Damme, who has already supported nearly 200 families to use BCI technology since the inception of Holland Bloorview’s clinical BCI program in 2019.
“I see a lot of big smiles from kids and families when they realize they’re using their minds to control their environment. This could mean making a painting on a canvas using a robotic ball, playing catch with their family using a pitching machine, or using their power wheelchair trainer to knock over bowling pins or playing video games with their friends.”
Approximately 30 per cent of children in Ontario start school with a disability or developmental need. Many continue to face barriers and inequities that limit their full participation in society – including in recreation, play and leisure activities, which are vital to children’s overall health and development.
Postal code, or where a child or family lives, can also be a barrier since leading-edge technology, including BCIs, hasn’t always been available to clinicians or children/families outside of larger urban centres. Equity and access in all corners of the province is important and BCI technology can be looked at through an inclusion lens. This technology can contribute to greater autonomy, dignity and joyful play for children and youth with disabilities.
Paula Crotteau, director of clinical services at the Inspire Centre in Timmins shares the emotional response from both clinicians and families when BCI technology was recently introduced at the centre in northern Ontario thanks to the EmpowerBCI initiative.
“Our team has already started to think about the possibilities BCI technology has for their practice. They are inspired by how quickly the kids seemed to pick up on how to use the technology. We believe [BCI] will give some of our most complex clients the opportunity to interact with others in ways that they have not previously been able to,” says Crotteau.
Learn more about how brain computer interface technology works in a clinical setting.