The 2025 Global Healthcare Innovation Summit in Ottawa may have been modest in scale, but its ambitions were anything but. Focused on Ontario and Quebec’s biotech ecosystems, the event brought together local academics, startups, and policymakers to tackle systemic hurdles—from long COVID’s lingering mysteries to the bureaucratic tangles stifling homegrown innovation.

Canada’s Crossroads: Nurturing Homegrown Innovation

The summit opened with a provocative keynote from Prof. PJ Deveraux, CEO and director of the World Health Research Trust, who challenged Canada’s reliance on foreign pharmaceuticals. Canadians invented insulin and enoxaparin but let others profit – we don’t have a single large home-grown pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturer. To those saying our small population size is a barrier, he pointed to Denmark’s NovoNordisk, a $570B company in a nation of 6 million, as proof that size isn’t destiny. His solution? A proposed $2.5B national endowment fund and tax incentives to boost biotech research and clinical trials, mirroring the EU’s Horizon program which will have invested €90.5B from 2021 through 2027 compared to Canada’s $39M ACT initiative. “Canada has world leading clinical trial units (CTUs)” he said, “but we need Canadian anchor companies” – and we can’t get those without substantial investment and policy changes.

Deveraux condemned Canada’s fragmented health data systems, noting that while Health Canada promises 30-day clinical trial approvals, delays often stretch to a year—a stark contrast to streamlined processes in the U.S. and EU. Importantly, restrictions on interprovincial data exchange pose significant barriers to obtaining important health data for research and impede clinical trial implementations. He challenged the notion of provincial diversity as a justification, citing the that both the UK and Australia have biobanks and federated repositories for health data, providing proof that these vital systems have been built in similarly diverse environments.

The urgency is amplified by AI’s data-driven economy: Canada’s sovereignty now hinges on controlling its health data. Two initiatives aim to address this:

▶  Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network (MOHCCN): Aggregating 15,000 genomic and clinical cancer datasets by 2026, with a proposed extension to 2030 for validating precision oncology approaches.

▶  Digital Health and Discovery Platform (DHDP): A federated system completing its Expression of Interest (EOI) phase July 18, 2025. Led by the Terry Fox Research Institute with $25M from ISED’s Digital Health Innovation Fund, it will allow secure, privacy-preserving queries of distributed datasets—starting with oncology and expanding to neurodegenerative diseases.

Both programs face systemic hurdles. MOHCCN struggles with provincial claims of “proprietary data” despite patient consent, while DHDP’s federated learning model—though innovative—requires buy-in from 44 institutions wary of sharing even anonymized records. Deveraux argued that without resolving these barriers, Canada risks ceding leadership in AI-driven medicine to nations treating data as a strategic asset, not a bureaucratic battleground. “We can’t compete with the US on dollars; we have to be more efficient,” he said. “This means developing a single national portfolio system, centralized research ethics boards, and the ability to embed study personnel in community hospitals.”

Ultimately, Deveraux argued that we need to frame healthcare research as a high-yield investment, not an expense, citing the EU’s Horizon program, which immediately returns €0.80 for every €1 invested and is expected to contribute as much as €11 in GDP growth per euro of investment by 2045. Advancing clinical trial infrastructure yields critical societal benefits: emergency preparedness, economic growth via job creation, and long-term healthcare savings – rooted in the observed phenomenon of improved participant outcomes regardless of therapeutic intervention.

Long COVID: From Mystery to Mechanisms

The long COVID crisis took center stage, highlighting that 65 million people are affected world-wide, with 1.5 million of those in Canada. JN Nova Pharma unveiled JN2019M5.2—a dual-action therapy delivered via inhaler that traps SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins while replacing damaged ACE2 enzymes. CEO Dr. John Gillard highlighted the treatment’s potential to address acute and chronic cases, though securing $4-8M for Phase II trials remains a hurdle. Meanwhile, Dr. Douglas Fraser’s LC-Optimize study of 5,194 patients revealed persistent proteomic changes in anyone who had been infected, with more pronounced differences in long haulers. Using advanced bioinformatics his team identified phenotypic markers leading to the ongoing LC-REVITALIZE trial testing repurposed drugs like Upadacitinib + clopidogrel and Pirfenidone. McMaster’s Dr. Manali Mukherjee added a personal dimension, sharing her 18-month battle with long COVID while presenting data linking specific antibody subsets to destructive immune processes, with the goal of identifying new treatment targets.

Breaking Barriers in Diagnostics and Therapeutics

Innovations in rapid diagnostics emerged as a theme. Ottawa-based Genomadix wowed everyone with their Cube analyzer − a rapid genetic test for stroke medication compatibility that delivers results in under one hour. Genomadix is extending the capability to support other point-of-care genetic tests for precision medicine. Yet CEO Dr. Steve Edgett highlighted a lack of standardized regulatory processes leading to reimbursement roadblocks with both CDA-AMC and OHIP. On the therapeutic front, Protaxis’s Dr. Eric Lacasse detailed their development of PROTACs technology—molecules that eliminate disease-causing proteins rather than just inhibiting them—showing 50x greater potency in enhancing CAR-T cancer therapies.

Building Bridges in the Ecosystem: From Lab to Global Market

The summit highlighted regional players filling critical gaps in Canada’s innovation pipeline. Carleton University’s professional Master of Biotechnology program, led by Dr. Kama Szereszewski, provides free biotech interns to startups, supporting activities such as IP validation, market research and quality management strategies.

AspireBio Consulting emerged as a key enabler for early-stage ventures. Founded by Dr. Sarmitha Sathiamoorthy, the firm helps biotechs navigate the 30-month journey from preclinical proof-of-concept to Phase I trials. “We align CMC, regulatory, and vendor strategies to avoid delays,” Sathiamoorthy explained, citing integrated planning and early CDMO/CRO selection to streamline submissions with Health Canada and the FDA.

Montreal’s Immune Biosolutions showcased dual capabilities: next-generation antibody development and discovery using their avian-based platform and in-house clinical-grade cGMP production facilities, ideal for supporting clinical trials. Spun out of the Montreal Heart Institute, the full service CRO, Seriant, has expertise in running high-volume clinical trials, with Director Axel Bergman detailing their unique proprietary platform that supports  decentralized studies using wearables and telemedicine. Meanwhile, Jeff Smirle’s Capital BioVentures, a federally backed not-for-profit accelerator, supports several Ottawa biotechs − including JN Nova Pharma and NuvoBio − through its CBV Basecamp incubation program, access to equipped laboratory facilities across partner institutions, and hands-on guidance from Experts-in-Residence specializing in regulatory strategy, IP management, and investor relations.

Uniting Data, Policy, and Investment to Secure Canada’s Healthcare Future

As the summit closed, a clear narrative emerged: Canada possesses world-class researchers and infrastructure but needs to fuse the nation’s collaborative spirit with political will to dismantle barriers and reframe healthcare research as a strategic investment rather than a cost center. While initiatives like MOHCCN and DHDP demonstrate Canada’s capacity for collaboration, their success hinges on bold policy reforms to unify provincial data systems and accelerate approvals.  The path forward demands treating healthcare innovation as economic infrastructure: leveraging public-private partnerships while empowering anchor companies to transform clinical trial units into engines of growth.