BC innovators lament lack of opportunities in Canada

VANCOUVER – B.C. medtech companies are frustrated that innovations developed on the West Coast can thrive overseas but rarely find buyers at home. For example, when Royal Columbia Hospital physician Steve Reynolds (pictured) helped develop a device to stimulate the diaphragm 15 years ago, he spent years trying to get it tested and adopted in B.C., but kept hitting hard knocks.

“I thought that medtech and industry had it all figured out because there’s a lot of money in there … and I realized we don’t,” said Reynolds, founder of Advancing Innovations in Medicine (AIM) Institute, speaking at the Unlock Growth: Strategic Procurement for Canadian MedTech panel in Vancouver in mid-October.

Reynolds watched as an American company picked up and invested in the device, leaving its B.C. origins behind. It later received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but he still can’t use it today because Health Canada hasn’t given it the green light.

“The thing that I helped invent is gone, may never really be introduced in the Canadian system at all…which was really, really sad,” he said at the event organized by the Council of Canadian Innovators.

Reynolds’ insights, and those of other entrepreneurs, were reported by Daisy Xiong in BIV.com.

Reynolds’ experience is far from unique and continues to occur widely, panellists shared, with many B.C. innovations finding it harder to break into the local healthcare system than overseas markets such as the U.S. and Europe, even as local institutions continue purchasing products from foreign suppliers.

As a result, the local healthcare system misses out on homegrown innovations and the opportunity to support their growth, which in turn could strengthen the local economy and create high-skilled jobs.

“We sort of treat medtech like softwood lumber. We cut it down and send it somewhere else, and buy the chair back for a massive markup,” said Reynolds.

Vancouver-based Arbutus Medical Inc. is another example. Its products, designed to simplify surgery to reduce costs, are available in California and many other markets, but have struggled to enter the local system because “people don’t help open the door,” according to Jack Pacey, founder of Pacey MedTech.

A 2022 Commonwealth Fund survey of physicians ranked Canada nine out of 10 high-income countries in terms of using digital healthcare solutions.

“Canada is known for innovation,” said Barb Kinnaird, a medtech advisor who moderated the panel.

“If we’ve built world-class technology here, we’re so good at innovation and it’s easier to sell it abroad, why can we not buy what we build here in B.C., is the big question.”

The current medtech system in Canada offers no incentives to buy local, and a risk-reverse mindset discourages trying new innovations, said panellists.

“We need a mindset shift in this country,” said Hamed Shahbazi, chairman and CEO of Vancouver-based healthcare technology developer Well Health Technologies Corp.

“We have a cultural problem, and there’s just too many layers of approval, too many layers of regulation.”

Claris Healthcare’s CEO Geof Auchinleck noted that Canada must move from a “don’t want to be blamed” culture to one that encourages risk-taking, similar to the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K., to make improvements.

Canada’s fragmented health-care system – with six health regional authorities spanning B.C. – complicates medtech procurement, said Kinnaird, adding that procurement teams tend to be rewarded for compliance rather than creativity.

And government contracts often remain in place longer than necessary, leaving health-care workers “OK with good enough,” she added.

“We should incentivize them to procure things [more easily], allow them to make mistakes” and encourage them to explore new options, said Kinnaird.

Those who attended the event recommended the government review the current landscape and consider establishing a task force to identify bottlenecks and support local innovations.

“The task force will review Canadian home-grown products and services, which are then prioritized for B.C. … as a way of encouraging entrepreneurs to bring their ideas forth,” said Shahbazi.

Local companies should be given an “unfair but not unethical advantage” by Canadian and B.C. governments when it comes to procurement, according to Reynolds.

And incentives are needed to make launching technology locally first financially attractive, said Auchinleck. For many B.C. companies, especially start-ups, pursuing FDA approval makes more economic sense than Health Canada given the larger market the former covers, he added.

“There are such disincentives to launch in Canada,” he said, calling for regulatory streamlining, including fast-tracking FDA-approved products.

Source: Daisy Xiong, BIV.com