MaRS announces program to facilitate the procurement of innovative health technologies

TORONTO, August 16, 2016 – Today, MaRS Discovery District launched Innovation Partnership: Procurement by Co-Design, a program designed to accelerate the development of technological breakthroughs by Ontario’s health ventures and facilitate their procurement within the Ontario public health system.

An exercise in collaborative design, the initiative offers healthcare service providers the opportunity to participate in the development of technology tailor-made to address the particular problems they face while complying with the Broader Public Sector (BPS) procurement guidelines.

“Health technology breakthroughs could play an important role in modernizing our aging healthcare system and creating innovative approaches to procurement can accelerate the adoption of those technologies,” said Zayna Khayat, lead of health systems innovation at MaRS Discovery District and executive sponsor of the program. “This partnership will help to reform how we harness new technology in order to better meet the needs and expectations of patients in Ontario.”

The Ontario government has invested $995,000 to support this project as part of the province’s OntarioBuys initiative to strengthen innovation and efficiency practices in the province’s health and education sectors.

“Ontario is proud to be home to a robust and thriving medical technology sector,” says Ontario’s Minister of Government and Consumer Services, Marie-France Lalonde. “Our province is the third-largest hub for biotechnology and the fourth-largest biomedical research centre in North America. Our government supports collaborative medical innovators, whose work leads to employment opportunities for thousands of people, opens up new opportunities in the global marketplace for our home-grown companies and helps people across our province receive the highest modern standards of patient care.”

“Health ventures are adding tremendous value to the healthcare system today, creating the next generation of digital health technologies that will positively impact patient outcomes, decrease costs and increase efficiency,” says Patrick Blanshard, Founder and CEO, Sensory Technologies Inc. and member of the Innovation Partnership: Procurement by Co-Design advisory committee. “Given the highly technical needs of healthcare organizations, it’s important that these companies have the opportunity to work alongside providers to develop products and solutions that can work in a clinical setting.”

An invitation is now open for publicly funded healthcare organizations to submit a challenge brief to Ontario health ventures. The challenges will be posted online by September 13, 2016, inviting ventures to compete for a grant.

Additional details can be found here.

About MaRS Discovery District
MaRS Discovery District (@MaRSDD) in Toronto is one of the world’s largest urban innovation hubs. MaRS supports promising young ventures that are tackling key challenges in the health, cleantech, finance & commerce, as well as work & learning sectors. In addition to helping startups launch, grow and scale, the MaRS community is dedicated to cross-disciplinary collaboration, commercialization of discoveries and driving ideas to impact.