Portal to help commercialize healthcare R&D

TORONTO – The Funding Portal Inc. reported today that it has entered into a Joint Venture with the University Health Network (UHN), Canada’s leading academic research hospital, to improve access to capital and commercialization opportunities for businesses and inventors in the Canadian healthcare sector.

Investments by governments in healthcare R&D are shifting from pure academic research to commercialization and market outcomes, according to Funding Portal data, which is driving demand for improved networks to link research, business and financing.

The new health-tech portal will go live at TheFundingPortal.com/HealthTech in September 2014. It will provide a common platform for securing funding, private financing and commercialization partnerships.

“Canada’s Life Sciences and Healthcare sector now ranks among the top five innovation sectors, as measured by R&D financing provisioned by governments in Canada. More than half of the $2.2 billion directed at this sector by government is now targeted at R&D and commercialization activities,” said Teri Kirk, CEO, The Funding Portal.  “It is time to get investment-grade opportunities out of the patent archives and out in front of investors and companies who can take them to market.”

“Hospital-based R&D has traditionally had limited access to capital markets and, similarly, investors have had limited access to Canada’s word-class hospital-based R&D,” said Dr. David Jaffray (pictured), Director of the Techna Institute at UHN, who is leading the Joint Venture for UHN.

Techna’s team of engineers, physicists, and programmers works with more than 20 industry partners to accelerate new technologies into the clinical setting. UHN and the Techna team have licensed more than 30 products in the medical device sector in the past five years.

“We are teaming up with The Funding Portal to bring forward investment-grade opportunities onto its innovative funding platform to attract commercialization partnerships, strategic investors and private capital,” Dr. Jaffray said.

Epic Capital Management Inc., a Toronto-based investment boutique, announced that it is launching a new fund, with target investment of $50 million, in Canadian healthcare R&D within the coming 12-18 months. “We welcome this new platform as a way to bring together leading healthcare research, government funding, commercialization partners, and private investment funds, such as our own,” said Scott Kaplanis, Partner, Epic Capital. Epic’s new Canadian Healthcare Fund will invest in innovative, private Canadian healthcare companies generally unavailable to the investing public.

The Funding Portal was registered in May 2014 as Canada’s first Exempt Market Dealer portal by securities regulators, a transformative development enabling the portal to facilitate matches and deals among researchers, funders, investors, and commercialization partners on its unique internet-enabled platform.

About The Funding Portal

The Funding Portal (TheFundingPortal.com) is a comprehensive service that improves access to both government funding and private financing in Canada.  The portal aggregates information on more than 7,000 sources of funding online, providing unique data analytics products, as well as access to partners and services that greatly improve the ability of companies, institutions and non-profits to secure the funding they seek. More than 17,000 Canadian organizations use The Funding Portal to find funding each month.

About UHN

University Health Network (UHN) is a leading academic research hospital in Toronto and a global leader in developing healthcare R&D. Techna is an institute of the University Health Network, in partnership with the University of Toronto, focused on the accelerated development and exploitation of technology for improved health. The Techna Institute is designed to shorten the time interval from technology discovery and development to application for the benefit of patients and the health care system. www.technainstitute.com