Bringing health innovation to the market

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused enormous health, social, and economic upheaval across the globe. It has also highlighted the need to implement health solutions quickly, affordably and reliably.

In response to the current crisis, and to help accelerate health innovation, a new national program called Lab2Market-Health (L2M-H) was officially launched on April 6, 2020. This will be the first cohort of the Lab2Market program with a focus on Health. It has been designed to support researchers solving pressing problems in the health-care industry.

Lab2Market-Health will expeditiously equip graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and researchers at Canadian universities and research institutions with the tools and expertise needed to reduce the time required to bring health solutions including vaccines, therapeutics, devices, virtual and digital care tools, and diagnostic tools to the market.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need to find new and better ways to accelerate the development of new health technologies and innovations,” says Dr. Alice Aiken, vice-president research and innovation at Dalhousie University. “Lab2Market-Health will help our researchers forecast the global health challenges of tomorrow, and better prepare for pandemics.”

"The present crisis brings to the forefront the need to open pathways to accelerate innovations in health care for today and tomorrow,” says Dr. Steven N. Liss, vice-president, research and innovation at Ryerson University. “Tackling complex, global problems requires collaboration, critical thinking and entrepreneurial skills, all of which are among the core features of this Lab2Market-Health program.”

Lab2Market-Health is designed to generate a maximum impact over a short period of time. It is a first step for anyone interested in commercializing an existing health technology or product, whether through a start-up or licensing agreement. The program requires a time commitment of 25 hours per week for seven weeks and can be accessed virtually. Through the program participants will:

• Build critical thinking, collaboration, communication, innovation and entrepreneurship skills
• Define clinical utility before spending money
• Understand their core customers, and the sales and marketing process required for initial clinical sales and downstream commercialization
• Assess intellectual property and regulatory risk before they design and build
• Gather data essential to customer partnerships/collaboration before doing the science
• Identify and understand financial vehicles
• Understand their regulatory pathway, and consult with regulatory authorities
• Understand their clinical pathway to market

“We’re excited to launch Lab2Market-Health to support graduate students and their supervisors in building capacity within their labs, universities, and communities to move their research from ‘bench-to-bedside’,” says Spencer Giffin, associate director of commercialization & start-ups at Dalhousie University. “This program will develop the next generation of health innovators to reduce both the immediate burdens on the healthcare system, as well as build preventive and predictive solutions for the future.”

Those interested in participating in the program should apply by April 17, 2020. The application can be found at lab2market.ca. The program will begin in early May.

Helping researchers commercialize their technology

The Lab2Market (L2M) program was developed to address Canada’s research commercialization performance, which lags behind that of fellow member countries in the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD). A major factor in this performance is the lack of support for the commercialization of intellectual property created at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

Over the next two years, the Lab2Market pilot program will apply and adapt these best practice models to the Canadian market in an effort to support Canadian researchers working to commercialize their technology. Our goal is to help develop a national research commercialization program on par with global leaders to better our society and economy.

The program is based on the successful I-Corps program in the United States, and the ICURe program in the United Kingdom. The Lab2Market pilot program is being funded by the Government of Canada through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), as well as the Ocean Startup Project.

Strengthening innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship

Lab2Market, developed and led by Dalhousie University and Ryerson University, leverages the national I-INC network. I-INC is Canada’s network of innovative and entrepreneurial universities, which is focused on strengthening innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship, moving ideas and inventions to innovation and impact, and connecting Canadian companies to the talent and ideas emerging from our universities.

I-INC accelerates the transfer of Canadian research-driven science and technology from lab-to-market and commercial application. Founded in 2014 by Ryerson University, Simon Fraser University and Ontario Tech University, the network has expanded to include 13 universities across Canada: Ryerson University, Dalhousie University, Simon Fraser University, Concordia University, Polytechnique Montréal, University of Manitoba, University of New Brunswick, McMaster University, Queen's University, Concordia, Ontario Tech University, University of Saskatchewan, Memorial University and University of Calgary.