Today is an exciting time to be working in medical technology (medtech) - medtech innovators have the opportunity to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities afforded by advances in AI and advanced robotics, trade restrictions and international instability notwithstanding. But to succeed in this competitive environment, you need the right ecosystem to grow your business.
Luckily for Vaughan-area companies, ecosystem partners in the Vaughan Healthcare Precinct Initiative - the City of Vaughan, ventureLAB, York University, and Mackenzie Health, are creating an environment where medtech innovators can seize the medtech moment and vault over barriers.
Vaughan has established players with insight. The City of Vaughan has become a centre for innovation in medtech and the life sciences. It has partnered with ventureLAB - York Region’s Innovation Centre and global founder community, York University, and Mackenzie Health to bring together a comprehensive ecosystem for medtech research, infrastructure, and commercialization under the banner of the Vaughan Healthcare Centre Precinct. These partners are bringing together business practitioners, educators, and researchers to transform an 82-acre area of land into an innovative cluster of healthcare excellence.
New facilities and talent give Vaughan a special leg up. In 2021, Mackenzie Health opened the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital—the province’s first new hospital in over 30 years. The Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital is Canada’s first “smart” hospital, with integrated systems and devices that communicate directly to improve information flow and patient care. York University is set to open its new medical school in 2028 at the Vaughan Health Campus, which will bring even more clinicians to work with the latest medtech innovations emerging from Vaughan’s ecosystem - and offer their insights and experience to medtech founders. The Ontario Centre for Innovation is partnering to lend its commercialization expertise to the new medical school, ensuring the new school is a testbed supporting early-stage medtech companies.
We recently asked ventureLAB’s Head of Medtech Initiatives, Dr. Nima Mohtaram, about his plans to capitalize on Vaughan’s strengths. He notes that Vaughan’s medtech strengths extend to the private sector as well. “Vaughan has a lot of established healthcare companies like Philips, Sterling Industries, LGC, to go along with its premier hospitals. This is a perfect environment to support new entrants,” Nima explains.
In 2024 ventureLAB launched a series of chats between Nima, medtech industry leaders, and the community. “We have a great network of medical device industry leaders. They have launched and finished a lot of great medtech ventures. It's time that they give some learning back to the community. This is a great complement to the ecosystem in Vaughan and York Region - we’re bringing people from different sectors together.” This highly successful series consistently receives 80+ registrants and is just getting started. Vaughan-based Sterling Industries CEO David Van Slingerland opened ventureLAB’s Medtech Leadership Night series, which has also featured Nicole DeKort, President & CEO of Medtech Canada and Dr. Milica Radisic, Professor at the University of Toronto and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering.
Medtech labs to lower barriers to access. Nima also highlights the need to provide commercializing companies with their own access to hardware. “I want to insist on the importance of infrastructure.” ventureLAB’s differentiator is its hardware focus, and that means lowering barriers to entry by free or low-cost access to the equipment startups need to test their products. “We have the wet lab in Vaughan in partnership with Sterling Industries that provides a real leg-up to startups.” Open since 2023, ventureLAB’s wet lab helps companies overcome barriers by providing access to microelectronic hardware devices in medical, biological and chemical applications. This is only the beginning. Nima continues: “Now it's time to expand to other areas of medical technology with a dry lab. The dry lab can provide startups with testing equipment for activities like medical imaging, diagnostic, and therapeutics."
Advising for all aspects of a company’s journey. Nima also highlights ventureLAB’s ability to provide holistic advising support to scaling companies: “We’ve been able to put together an extraordinary and diverse set of advisors - in terms of their backgrounds and their skill sets, whether a company needs help with technology, investment, or sales and marketing. All of the advisors and Executives-in-Residence - they’re covering all aspects of commercialization.” ventureLAB’s bench of advisors is deep and can support companies from many different backgrounds and at all stages of their commercialization journey.
The importance of a comprehensive ecosystem with support that “gets it” can’t be overstated. ventureLAB recently interviewed Dolma Tsundu, CEO of Flutter Care, who had this to say about why she expanded into the Vaughan ecosystem: “For much of our time in the Hardware Catalyst Initiative, we were based in British Columbia and relied on virtual support from HCI, but ventureLAB’s mentorship and ecosystem have been essential.” It's the whole package that makes the difference.
All of the ingredients come together in Vaughan for its startup and scaleup medtech innovators to shine.
Get your HardTech Tickets!
Taking place in Vaughan, this year’s Hardtech Summit celebrates Canada’s leadership in hardware innovation with a special focus on medtech. The event will feature a new Medtech Zone, showcasing the technologies, founders, and ecosystem partners driving advances in medical imaging, diagnostics, therapeutics, and connected health.
As ventureLAB’s hardware-focused ecosystem continues to expand its wet and dry lab capabilities, the Hardtech Summit offers a front-row seat to see how innovators are breaking barriers and turning bold ideas into commercialized healthcare solutions.
Register here: hardtech.ca
