The Healthtech
Knowledge Hub Launch:
Driving the growth
of healthcare technology
developed by Quebec entrepreneurs.
The CTS Healthtech Knowledge Hub Launch:
Driving the growth of healthcare technology
developed by Quebec entrepreneurs
Montreal, September 26, 2023 – To mark its 15th anniversary, CTS is proudly launching its Healthtech Knowledge Hub, which is designed to boost start-ups’ impact and drive the growth of healthcare technology developed by Quebec entrepreneurs. This initiative led by CTS – an independent, not-for-profit entity with an extensive network of experts and collaborating organizations – supports its mission to accelerate start-ups.
The Knowledge Hub brings together companies, investors, clinicians and end users as well as the health’s entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem. Its mission is to educate, create connections, raise awareness, and exert influence to promote prospects, highlight success factors, and fuel widespread adoption of digital healthcare technology and innovative medical devices.
The Knowledge Hub connects stakeholders, captures knowledge and expertise, and provides a range of targeted activities and tools, including:
- A newsletter with specialized content drawn from its technology watch
- A podcast featuring local and international thought leaders
- A unique program of workshops, focus groups, and networking events
- A healthtech entrepreneurs’ club
- A healthtech investors’ club
- A directory of Quebec healthtech companies
The Knowledge Hub will roll out its activities throughout the year designed to showcase healthtech innovation and entrepreneurship, which will help position Quebec as a global leader in this fast-growing sector.
“The start-ups that develop and deliver these innovative technologies spend a tremendous amount of time educating, influencing, and raising awareness among their stakeholders, including investors, clinicians and end users, and the industry in general. And they do so in a sector that lags in adopting these technologies. Through the Knowledge Hub, CTS aims to boost start-ups’ impact and act as a catalyst for their growth, while working in close collaboration with the ecosystem’s many partners,” says Jean-Pierre Robert, CEO of CTS.
“I’m proud to partner with CTS and support the Knowledge Hub reaching its full impact. I am convinced it will spur growth in healthtech adoption as well as benefit healthcare trajectories in Quebec,” states Roger Simard, Managing Partner at CTS Knowledge Hub.
The CTS Healthtech Knowledge Hub is designed to:
- Curate and disseminate innovative sector-related content
- Position healthcare technologies developed by Quebec’s entrepreneurs
- Connect companies that can benefit from mutual synergy through their respective technologies, by developing collaborative platforms and a platform economy
- Create and lead discussions that bring together stakeholders to foster knowledge transfer, strategic alignment, collaboration, and involvement on key sector issues
- Promote the adoption of healthcare technology solutions by clinicians and end users in Quebec
- Increase investor interest towards this sector
Find out more about the Knowledge Hub on its website and subscribe to its mailing list.
The launch of this new CTS initiative is made possible thanks to the financial partnerships of Ministère de l’Économie, de l’Innovation et de l’Énergie du Quebec and Ville de Montréal.
About CTS
Our mission is to act as a catalyst for the growth of start-ups in life sciences, with a focus on medical technology and digital health, by delivering customized acceleration services. Working with accelerators, incubators, and other active ecosystem partners, we coach companies through the critical stages of commercialization and financing. In addition, we facilitate access to a complex and dynamic ecosystem of key players in medicine and business.
Our vision is to become one of Canada’s most successful healthtech technology accelerators, creating national flagships who will help delivering on the promise of 4P (predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory) medicine.
Source: CTS – Health Technology Catalyst
Interview requests: Marie-Hélène Grenier, T: 514 886-5868
Appendices 1, 2, 3 and 4 featuring content from the Knowledge Hub press kit, and the Knowledge Hub activities iconography
ANNEX 1
Mécanismes d’adhésion au « Knowledge Hub » des technologies de la santé du CTS
Newsletter sent to registered members
How to sign up: via this link
Podcast available on major streaming platforms
How to listen: prerecorded
How to sign up: via this link
The Healthtech Investor Club
Open to all investors interested in investing in start-ups/scale-ups in the healthcare technology sector (see Annex 2 for detailed definition)
How to sign up: via this link
Includes activities, communications and events curated for club members
Healthtech Entrepreneur Club
Cofounders of start-ups/scale-ups and established companies in the healthcare technology sector
How to sign up: via this link
Includes activities, communications and events curated for club members
Company directory
Open to all healthtech companies in Quebec
How to sign up: each company can check if it’s listed or modify its registration information.
Workshops and focus groups
Participants solicited on a case-by-case basis depending on the theme discussed
How to sign up: upon invitation
ANNEX 2
Définition de l’audience cible du « Knowledge Hub » des technologies de la santé du CTS
Definition of CTS Healthtech Knowledge Hub’s targeted audience
|
Companies
|
Includes companies developing and providing healthcare technology solutions including medical devices, medical imagery, and all digital health related solutions.
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|
Investors
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Includes investors mostly from Quebec, including:
Initially, emphasis will be placed on Quebec investors followed by investors from the rest of Canada, the United States and internationally. |
|
Clinicians and end users
|
Includes those who participate in creating, developing, using or benefiting from health innovation; more specifically:
“Clinicians and end users participate in the process, take ownership of social innovation and capitalize on it. Chiefly, they benefit from social innovation, but they also implement innovative practices by taking part in discussions, improvements, adjustments and assessments. clinicians and end users may be sector players or users, i.e., professionals who take ownership of new ways of doing things and put them into practice within their organizations, or beneficiaries, i.e., users or recipients of a new service or product designed for them” (RQIS, 2022). |
ANNEXE 3
Health technologies include:
- Medical technologies, including diagnostic medical devices, therapeutic medical devices and medical imaging;
- Digital health, that CTS categorizes in 12 sub-sectors:
- Telehealth
- Digital Diagnostics
- Remote Patient Monitoring
- Care Coordination Solutions
- Clinical Decision Support
- Patient Engagement and Adherence
- Multi-omics and Digital Pharma
- Health Practices Management Systems
- Wellness
- Digital Therapeutics
- Clinical Documentation Management
- Health Information Portal
- Enabling technologies that CTS classifies in 9 categories:
- 5G Connectivity
- Blockchain
- Cloud Services
- Data Architecture
- Cybersecurity
- AI and Machine Learning
- Interoperability
- Metaverse
ANNEXE 4
Biographies of people available for interviews
Jean-Pierre Robert – President and CEO, CTS
Jean-Pierre Robert is a seasoned administrator, an internationally recognized ambassador of medical innovations, and a renowned leader, in the United States, Europe, and Asia, in the pharmaceutical and medical-device fields.
Jean-Pierre Robert is a seasoned administrator, an internationally recognized ambassador of medical innovations, and a renowned leader, in the United States, Europe, and Asia, in the pharmaceutical and medical-device fields.
He has held several positions, including Vice-President and Executive Director at Tyco Healthcare/Mallinckrodt (now Covidien) from 1996 to 2003 and President and Executive Director at Draxis from 2005 to 2010. Since August 2010, he has been the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Cadens Medical Imaging.
His expertise in the field and his experience in crisis management have made him a business development specialist in global markets. In addition to knowing how to recognize opportunities, he knows how to pursue them. As a seasoned M&A negotiator, Jean-Pierre has an innate ability to bring together ideal candidates whose talents are essential for project success.
Jean-Pierre is keen to share his experience in wealth development so that people around him can benefit from it – that is why he is involved in several business networks and sits on several distinguished boards of directors.
Roger Simard, CTS Healthtech Knowledge Hub Managing Partner
Trained as a pharmacist, Roger Simard pivoted to the business field early in his career. He worked as a sales representative and then as the sales director for Genentech, a Californian biotechnology firm. With the advent of the Internet, he founded Conceptis Technologies, a company specializing in information technology applied to the medical world. This company was the first Canadian firm to win a Milia award for its online medical training software.
In 1999, Conceptis launched what would become the largest portal for information and education in cardiology, theheart.org. Together
with Eric Topol, author (The Creative Destruction of Medicine, The Patient Will See You Now, Deep Medicine) and a geneticist and cardiologist, he co-led a team of twelve medical editors. After selling his company to WebMD in 2005, Roger Simard returned to pharmacy practice and founded Pharmacie 3.0 in 2014 to optimize the management of chronic diseases using connected health technologies, the pharmaceutical care approach, and pharmacogenomics.
Today, Roger serves on company boards, acts as a digital health consultant for various organizations, and coaches entrepreneurs in healthtech. A member of the WHO’s digital health expert committee, Roger is a sought-after speaker both locally and internationally. Roger regularly engages with various media to talk about the future of healthcare and is deeply involved in his community, prioritizing the advancement of our society by, notably, taking part in the Canadian Red Cross and the Fondation AGES. He was recently appointed as CTS Knowledge Hub Managing Partner.
Christèle Berthelot-Logsdon, Advisor, CTS
Christèle is an accomplished leader with over 20 years’ experience in fintechs, financial institutions, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. She has been a key member of HSBC’s global management team and has worked in Canada as well as overseas in Brazil, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, France, and the Middle East.
Today, Christèle draws on her experience and devotes her energy to creating value for the established and start-up organizations with which she works. She is a skilled problem-solver with a proven track record of building and managing highly committed teams. She applies her skills and expertise effectively on both internal and external mandates.
Her areas of expertise are operations leadership, strategy execution, organizational transformation, customer experience, business development, partnerships, and marketing.
Christèle is able to draw on enormous quantities of energy to set, drive, and achieve new goals. Her insatiable curiosity and desire for discovery have led her into the world of digital healthcare. She dedicates her talent and expertise to leading the digital healthcare revolution by building ecosystems, assembling teams, and creating strategic service proposals. “At CTS, we aim to enable 4P medicine (personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory) by accelerating the growth of digital healthcare start-ups.”