Innovation council aims to break down barriers for home-grown tech

ST. JOHN’S, NL – The official launch of a new, pan-Canadian organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of innovative, home-grown healthcare solutions was announced at Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services’ (NL Health) 2025 Health Innovation Summit, held in St. John’s last November.

Spearheaded by HealthPro Canada, a national group purchasing organization consisting of more than 2,000 hospitals, health authorities and other healthcare services, the new National Healthcare Innovation Council will champion innovations with scalable impact, mobilize adoption across jurisdictions, break down policy, procurement and structural barriers and build commercialization pathways.

“Canada has no shortage of exceptional healthcare innovations,” said Christine Donaldson, president and CEO of HealthPro Canada. “Through the council, we’re creating a clear path to scale by connecting leaders across provinces, sectors and disciplines to drive real system change.”

The goal of the organization, said Ron Johnson, inaugural chair of the council and NL Health’s vice president of digital health, innovation and research, “is to take innovations from one jurisdiction and move them into others without the necessity of a time-consuming evaluation and procurement process.”

The council expects to have regular meetings through the year, some in person and others held virtually.

Johnson cited the example of one Newfoundland-based company, PolyUnity Tech Inc., that could benefit from the council’s work. Based in St. John’s, the company designs and produces parts and products for healthcare organizations using 3D printing technology.

One of its products, a 3D-printed facial mould, is used in Newfoundland to accurately target radiation therapy for patients with head and neck cancers. The 3D printed moulds are personalized by scanning the patient’s face and replace a more time-consuming manual process.

“We helped to incubate PolyUnity and have a contract with them, but it’s very difficult for a company in startup mode to take an innovation in one jurisdiction and move it to another because they have to go through a time-consuming procurement process every time. A day in the life of a startup is very different from a multinational because they don’t have the money to burn, so what we’re trying to do with this national innovation council is shorten that runway from one jurisdiction to the next.”

Using the same technology, PolyUnity also won an award at the summit for developing a perfectly fitting breast prosthesis for a patient who had undergone a double breast mastectomy.

CAN Health Network, a federally funded organization with a similar mandate, is also a member of the National Health Innovation Council. Working together, said Johnson, the two organizations will strive to further streamline the procurement process by listing an innovative product or solution on the HealthPro site once it has been procured in one jurisdiction, thereby reducing the need for repeated pilots.

NL Health’s sixth annual innovation summit attracted more than one thousand attendees and 66 speakers from across Canada and beyond.

Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services relies on partnerships to develop, acquire and disseminate innovative healthcare products and solutions.

“A number of years ago, we realized that the problems in the healthcare system were getting such that the normal ways of solving problems weren’t working as well,” said Johnson. “The challenges in the system are so great that the traditional reliance on quality improvement wasn’t sufficient, so we had to come up with a new way to solve our problems.”

NL Health’s new strategy for solving problems in the healthcare system is to collaborate and partner with local as well as national companies. Every year, the health authority publishes a public request for proposals inviting companies to join its roster of strategic innovation partners. The health authority asks frontline staff across the province’s healthcare settings to identify opportunities for innovation and invites one or more of its strategic innovation partners to come up with a solution.

There are currently 20 strategic innovation partners, including five new ones who were announced at the November summit.

Johnson cites the example of an alternate level of care (ALC) problem that was successfully addressed through partnerships with Seafair Capital of St. John’s and Mobia Health Innovations of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

“In Newfoundland, on any given day, we have hundreds of hospital beds taken up by patients who no longer require acute care,” said Johnson. “So, we issued a challenge and partnered with Seafair Capital to create a software solution called Discharge Hub, which has taken three days off our discharge process for ALC patients.”

Discharging ALC patients from hospital is only possible when the supports such as beds, walkers, oxygen and home care are arranged for them. Discharge Hub identifies the supports required and expedites the process.

The solution was tested for six months at Newfoundland’s Health Sciences Centre and St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital in St. John’s and was subsequently introduced at hospitals across Newfoundland and Labrador. NL Health is now working with HealthPro Canada and others to make Discharge Hub available to other jurisdictions.

The development and testing of Discharge Hub is an example of NL Health’s characterization of the province’s healthcare system as a “living laboratory where public and private partnerships are actively forged to improve patient care.”