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Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME / CFS) Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS), Fibromyalgia Leading Research. Delivering Hope.Open Medicine Foundation® Canada
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Our Purpose

Revolutionize the way we understand and treat chronic complex multi-system diseases, with initial focus on ME/CFS and Long COVID, by illuminating their mechanisms, accelerating effective treatments, and empowering personalized care.

Our Vision

A world where ME/CFS, Long COVID, and related diseases are understood, rapidly diagnosed, and effectively treated—so every patient can live fully.

Our Mission

To drive and fund global collaborative research that unlocks disease biology, delivers precise diagnostics, and advances treatments—giving every patient a pathway to care and hope.

OMF Canada Board of Directors

Meet Open Medicine Foundation Canada’s Board of Directors who each bring a special skill to help advance the mission of OMF Canada. 

Linda Tannenbaum, portrait

Linda Tannenbaum

Founder & President
The inception of Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) traces back to the personal journey of its founder, Linda Tannenbaum. As OMF's President and CEO, Linda's motivation was deeply personal; her daughter, at the age of 16, was struck by ME/CFS, a diagnosis that came without the prospect of diagnostic tests or viable treatments. Confronted with the painful reality of her daughter's diminished quality of life, Linda was propelled into action. Her pursuit for answers revealed a stark void in collaborative and transparent research, as well as funding for ME/CFS and related chronic, complex diseases. Determined to bridge this gap, Linda established OMF in 2012, with a vision to catalyze large-scale research efforts aimed at creating diagnostic tools, effective treatments, and ultimately, prevention methodologies for these conditions. Linda's professional background as a clinical laboratory scientist, holding a bacteriology degree from UCLA, and her experience managing a clinical laboratory for over 20 years, have all converged to fuel her current mission. With unwavering dedication, Linda Tannenbaum now channels her expertise and passion into spearheading the quest to find a cure for chronic complex diseases, enhance patient care, and restore the lives of millions affected by these conditions.
Kimberly Hicks headshot

Kimberly Hicks

Treasurer
Ms. Hicks has worked with OMF since its early days, first as a board member and currently as the global COO/CFO/Treasurer, helping to build the organization to the global collaborative research entity it is today. As a patient, she is driven by a need to accelerate research findings into diagnostics and treatments and bring precision healthcare to all patients suffering from these diseases. She is a C-suite Finance industry veteran with over 25 years of leadership, business transformation, business development/sales, merger integrations, and major strategic initiative experience across private and public sectors, and international settings. In the past few years she has transitioned to Health Tech and Healthcare, and has a keen interest and passion for the use of technology to solve big healthcare problems. She is specifically focused on the use of AI and LLM and Web3 solutions to target answers more quickly and build community and patient engagement around those solutions. Ms. Hicks holds an MA in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from St. Mary’s University and a BA in Psychology from The University of Texas.
Lynn LaMothe, portrait

Lynn LaMothe

Secretary
Lynn LaMothe, now retired, worked as a Distribution Manager for Procter and Gamble Cellulose Inc., and later as a District Manager for Johnson and Johnson Consumer Goods, responsible for the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. While working for Procter and Gamble, Lynn managed the logistics for the pulp and paper product, which entailed the oversight of a $25,000.000.00 freight budget. During her time at Johnson and Johnson, Lynn worked to train up a sales team, manage key corporate accounts and grow her divisions sales targets. Lynn’s strengths lie in her ability to motivate people and grow a cooperative work environment. Her belief is that a well supported and respected team is a key component to any successful business model. Outside of work, Lynn enjoyed helping new Immigrants get settled in her city. For the past many years, Lynn has dedicated her time to raising her 2 children. She currently lives in Victoria, B.C. with her husband and their daughter, who suffers with ME. She is excited to be part of a Canadian team working to find a cure for ME.
Tom Cornwall headshot

Tom Cornwall, PhD

Tom Cornwall, PhD, is a health economist and data scientist. He uses real-world medical data to learn what helps patients. He has extensive experience in health research. For seven years, he has worked across liver, lung, mental health, and skin diseases. He has led studies with electronic health records and insurance claims and built web tools that support care decisions. His commitment to ME/CFS is personal: his wife lives with severe ME/CFS.
Nicolas Routhier headshot

Nicholas Routhier

Nicholas Routhier is a tech entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience spanning across multiple industries and ventures. He is currently the founder of CubicSpace Technologies Inc., a Montreal-based company focused on developing next generation 3D image processing technologies to provide a natural, comfortable, and intuitive 3D user-experience for any user on any display device, including headsets (VR, AR, MR) and glass-free 3D displays. Nicholas is recognized for his strategic vision, his analytical skills and his leadership which have helped him navigate and position his ventures in new emerging industries. Mr. Routhier is also a seasoned technologist with 15 patents granted for innovations which have generated millions of dollars in revenues through the years. Nicholas firmly believes in giving back and lending his expertise to support Open Medicine Foundation Canada’s mission and others.

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Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) Form 

Microvesicles and viral sequencing
Microvesicles are a type of extracellular vesicle that is released from the cell membrane. Vesicles are small, fluid-filled sacs or vacuoles within the body. Sequencing is a technique used to determine the exact sequence of bases (A, C, G, and T) in a DNA (or viral) molecule.
NMR Metabolomics
NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) is an instrument/tool used to perform metabolic studies, metabolic profiling, and metabolomics in biofluids and tissues for more than 40 years using magnetic fields. There is a very close connection between metabolic measurements and NMR. This connection has flourished because of NMR’s many unique strengths for characterizing complex mixtures’ chemical composition.
Proteomics
The large-scale study of proteins, which are large, complex molecules that are required for structure, function, and regulation of the human body's tissues and organs.
Autoantibodies
Antibodies that react with self-molecules and that occur in healthy individuals and are referred to as natural antibodies or autoantibodies.
Extracellular DNA for viral reactivation and Mitochondrial DNA
exDNA (extracellular DNA), exDNA is often secreted actively and is used to perform several tasks, thereby offering an attractive target or tool for biotechnological, medical, environmental, and general microbiological applications. Viruses are intracellular parasites that rely to a significant extent on the host cell for replication. Viral reactivation occurs when an active replication of the viral genome results in a lytic (degradation of the cell) infection characterized by the release of new progeny (descendant) virus particles.
Immune cell profiling
The immune system has many important regulatory roles in disease development and progression. Given the emergence of effective immune therapies, reliable predictors of response are needed. Immune cell profiling determines response by evaluating immune cell populations from treated and untreated samples. For our purposes, we will evaluate the white blood cell response to the viral infection using a process called “Cytof.”
Leukocyte Genomics
A leukocyte is a colorless cell circulating in the blood and body fluids and is involved in counteracting foreign substances and disease. A genome is all genetic material of an organism. Genomics is a biology field focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. Therefore, leukocyte genomics is the study of all genetic material of leukocytes.
Metabolomics
Metabolomics is a way to study metabolism – that is, through measuring amounts of the metabolites (small molecules) produced by our bodies as we convert food into energy and other molecules that our cells need to survive. Metabolomics technology is ‘large-scale,’ meaning that several thousand metabolites can be measured from a single sample of e.g., blood or urine.
Micro RNA
Cells use Micro RNA to control whether a particular gene is making too much, too little or the normal amount of its protein at a particular time.