Spotlight on Health Innovation

Published on April 1, 2019

Andrew Casey / President & CEO - BIOTECanada

Norma Biln / CEO - Augurex Life Sciences

Peter van der Velden / Managing General Partner - Lumira Ventures

John Ruffolo / Co-Founder & Vice-Chair - The Council of Canadian Innovators

Canada is internationally respected for its life-changing successes in health innovation. However, at home, our lack of national alignment on health innovation and the important competitive advantage our national healthcare system represents is an impediment to Canada owning the podium in the massive opportunity the future of health represents. This Spotlight explores the challenges and opportunities Canada faces in health, and what our governments, innovators, entrepreneurs and health professional must do to position Canada as a leading international competitor in the future of health.

Key Takeaways & Calls to Action

The growing global population, and the health challenges that come with it, are a massive global future economy opportunity that Canada and our health innovation industry cannot afford to ignore.
The digitalization of health data and the connection of the entire country’s medical information is Canada’s largest health tech opportunity. Our social healthcare system would enable us to implement this change leading to the emergence of many sub-sectors within health.
Canada’s health sector lacks the depth and continuity of capital to commercialize its great health innovations, which is allowing foreign players to take our innovations offshore and resell them to us at huge mark-ups.
We must focus on establishing public-private funds that use different approaches to support our health innovators. These funds must be designed to fuel healthcare start-ups and entrepreneurs, especially in the early-stage technology development.

Watch and Read the Experts’ Full Interviews:

The Business Connector Andrew Casey President & CEO - BIOTECanada "The global population is going to reach 10 billion people in the next decade, so we need to find new ways to grow, manufacture and address the health space’s challenges."

The Entrepreneur Norma Biln CEO - Augurex Life Sciences "Digital health affects everything from healthcare delivery to the advancement of innovation – digitization will modernize healthcare in ways that most of us can’t even envision."

The Investor Peter van der Velden Managing General Partner - Lumira Ventures "Canada lacks a national health innovation strategy, which has led to competition and conflict between the innovation programs of the federal government, which controls things like IP, and provincial governments, that pay for healthcare programs."

The Innovation Expert John Ruffolo Co-Founder & Vice-Chair - The Council of Canadian Innovators "Ironically, Canada's healthcare system and expertise are renowned worldwide, but health is also one of our industries that is the most disconnected from innovation activity."