Source: itbusiness.ca
A very different kind of four hour kickoff event took place on January 15th in Newmarket, York Region, hosted by the Southlake Regional Health Centre community hospital.
Eight health-tech consulting teams, five government and private funding organizations and Southlake’s hospital managers and staff gathered to hear 17 Regional innovation heath technology developers pitch their best new information technology ideas. All in one place and at the same time.
Southlake employs 400 physicians and a staff of 2,500. It serves a population of over 1 million people with a vision is to provide them ‘shockingly excellent innovative care’.
Like all modern hospitals, Southlake was looking for new information technology solutions to the many health care delivery challenges that it must address.
In a nutshell, the amount of innovative healthcare technology created by healthcare IT SME’s outweighs what the existing healthcare system can acquire and deploy at any one time. Meaning that historically it has been very difficult to commercialize healthcare innovation in Canada, no matter how good. While the US, the UK and EU to some extent promote SME hospital product development with expenditures, there are no such programs here.
Former astronaut, Dr. Dave Williams, Southlake’s President and CEO is a believer in growing York Region’s home-grown innovators. Pivotal in making the Healthcare Ecosphere event happen, Williams saw that Southlake partnered with ventureLAB, York Region’s non-profit innovation centre for advanced health tech entrepreneurs. The collaboration was born and the idea came to life.
The event included commentaries on hospital partnerships by Southlake executives, a ‘success’ SME case study panel, short elevator pitches by all seventeen SME’s, normal networking and an unusual ‘speed dating’ mash-up where all of those there arranged quick meet ups on-the-spot with developers, hospital management and resource consultants.
Southlake set the stage by stipulating the innovation areas its managers were most interested in. These included IT technologies which would facilitate improvements in:
- Chronic disease management
- In-home remote monitoring devices/technology
- Health informatics and analytics
- Health systems and process re-engineering
- Imaging
- Mobile applications
“The idea is to link small-to-medium sized enterprises with hospitals to accelerate the commercialization of their ideas,” said Dan Wasserman, entrepreneur in residence at ventureLAB. Although the GTA and York Region is home to thousands of technology developers engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs, most often they need assistance to coordinate a successful commercial launch of their technology enterprises.
Of the seventeen presenters, four were immediately deemed qualified to be invited to an angel funding organization’s venture capital screening meeting. This is considered an outstanding outcome demonstrating a very high ratio for early interest.
“The Healthcare Ecosphere is a model which we think will significantly help the healthcare sector more easily adopt technologies that will greatly improve patient outcomes “said Jeremy Laurin, President and CEO of ventureLAB. “We think it’s a good first step to building a true healthcare ecosphere for SME’s in York Region and maybe across Canada.”
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The Regional Municipality of York is located in the heart of the Greater Toronto Area and is home to 1.1 million residents and 42,000 business establishments, making it one of Canada’s largest municipalities and the second largest business centre in the Province of Ontario.
Comprised of nine local municipalities, York Region is a premier business location in Canada. The Region is home to operations of 14 Fortune 100 companies, four of Canada’s top 10 corporate R&D investors, Canada’s second largest Information & Communications Technology (ICT) cluster and global industry leaders in Life Sciences, CleanTech, Financial Services and Advanced Manufacturing.
As Canada’s fastest growing large municipality, York Region has one of the most educated and diverse workforces in North America, the lowest commercial property taxes in greater Toronto and an exceptional quality of life attracting top global talent.
York Region’s local municipalities include the City of Markham, the City of Vaughan, the Town of Richmond Hill, the Town of Newmarket, the Town of Aurora, the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, the Town of East Gwillimbury, the Town of Georgina and the Township of King.