Vancouver is one of the hottest technology hubs in North America.
With so much news, data, and events to cover across the city and province, Techcouver leans on professionals in the field to help keep our audience properly informed and up-to-date.
Last time we discussed the Vancouver region’s potential as a clean-tech leader in the lithium battery space as well as the city’s capacity to model the future of industrial construction.
In this Winter edition, experts weigh in on the province’s healthcare crisis and the state of the region’s life sciences innovation.
Solving a Canadian Crisis
Canada’s healthcare system is suffering from a staffing crisis, with unfilled positions in healthcare and social assistance remaining high since the COVID-19 Pandemic.
A recent poll conducted by B.C.’s largest healthcare union revealed that more than half of care aides feel they don’t have enough time to meet the needs of all their patients, and almost as many say the stressful work experience over the last three years has made it likely they will leave the healthcare industry altogether.
“There is no question that the healthcare staffing crisis impacts patient care,” says Peter Faist, the CEO and founder of Staffy, a digital staffing marketplace for healthcare.
This can look like extended wait times for care, shutdowns of rural hospital emergency rooms in the summer, as well as errors in patient care, Faist informed Techcouver in an interview.
“For example, a nurse working an understaffed shift may lack the bandwidth and resources to be as thorough as they would like in their patient care to no fault of their own, which unfortunately might impact the patient experience,” the entrepreneur offers.
With a network of over 30,000 qualified workers, Staffy has filled over 100,000 shifts with top-tier talent.
“Staffy essentially creates a bridge between healthcare organizations and qualified healthcare workers,” explains Faist. “Healthcare organizations can then refine their experience on our platform by defining their needs, from the desired skills they are looking for to the preferred rates they are open to paying and reviewing qualified talent accordingly. On the healthcare worker side, they also have the opportunity to refine their experience on our platform by setting their own rates and available hours.”
Unlike nursing agencies, the healthcare workers who use Staffy are not employed or contracted by the platform—it is not designed to replace a healthcare worker’s full-time employment.
“We are simply the conduit between qualified healthcare workers and healthcare organizations who have open shifts to fill and fulfill the necessary vetting process,” says Faist.
The reality of the healthcare industry, the CEO says, is that there is always a demand for care. Given Canada’s population, both growing and aging, Faist can envision long-term staffing concerns for the sector.
His platform, and other tech-forward innovations, aim to help mitigate the worst of the crisis.
Anchors Aweigh in Life Science
Canada is ranked among the top 10 countries for research output, producing nearly 4% of the world’s research publications, despite making up just 0.005% of the population—yet is a laggard in regards to commercializing its own scientific discoveries.
Gordon McCauley believes this is a major waste of potential economic impact for the region.
“There is a long-recognized disconnect between Canada’s strong foundational research performance and ingenuity, and translation into companies that capture resulting economic benefits for Canada,” the chief executive officer of adMare informed Techcouver in an interview.
Developing Canadian anchor firms will help to bridge this gap, he asserts. His company’s think tank, the adMare Institute, recently released a report demonstrating that Canada has all the ingredients for a globally competitive life sciences industry except for an anchor-sized void.
“To realize the full potential of Canada’s life sciences innovation and establish a self-sustaining industrial sector, Canada must develop as many potential anchor companies as possible,” said McCauley.
AdMare BioInnovations is on a mission to address Canada’s commercialization gap by building life science companies, training industry-ready talent, and creating ecosystems that nurture innovation and collaboration across academia and business.
Defined as a “dominant company with considerable market share, brand recognition, and sustained success,” an anchor company within a cluster can create important competitive advantages for the region.
“Anchor firms enhance regional innovation,” says McCauley. “Our research suggests that this is pivotal to the emergence and maturation of globally competitive innovation clusters.”
An anchor firm interacts systematically with other companies and organizations within a cluster, he explains, functioning as a bridge connecting together regional and global networks of partners, suppliers, customers, and stakeholders.
To become an anchor firm, a company must have a deliberate and intentional mindset from early on, reach critical mass, and sustain a dominant market position through continual innovation, according to McCauley.
“It begins with a corporate perspective that functioning as an anchor to strengthen regional innovation, including substantial investments to cultivate the regional ecosystem, is aligned with corporate goals,” he says. “From this beginning, to become an anchor firm, a company must mature to establish an international presence and market position that enables the privileged business insights and global networks essential to provide an anchor function.”
Although there are several promising potential anchor companies in development, at this time none of Canada’s biotech firms have all of these attributes.
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