These 15 promising Canadian ventures are building innovative healthcare solutions for the future.
In today’s world, there are many healthcare focused companies that have become household names due to their innovative solutions. Solutions that were completely new or re-imagined from the old. That’s why we teamed up with the TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good to present the Health Impact Investor Challenge. We are thrilled to be introducing the top 15 Ventures of the Health Impact Investor Challenge that will make a significant impact on the global market and become tomorrow’s leaders in the healthcare field.
Throughout the application process, we have seen many incredible ventures from across Canada applying to the program for a chance to hone their fundraising skills, better quantify their impact, and ultimately win $200,00+ in investment.
And after a few months of analyzing and evaluating all these amazing healthcare ventures alongside our partners at TELUS Pollinator Fund and HaloHealth, it’s time to find out which impact startups were selected into the Health IIC 2023 Top 15!
Also represented are ventures undertaking exciting innovations in mental health, digital health, women’s health, medical devices, and more. Within the top 15 ventures, 53% are founded by women while 47% are BIPOC-led, with representation of companies from Alberta and Ontario.
If you’re interested in investing in any of these healthcare companies, you can join the investor’s cohort in the Health Impact Investor Challenge to navigate the investment process, build your network with like-minded investors, and invest in up-and-coming Canadian healthcare ventures. Reach out to our team to learn more today
Meet the Top 15 Ventures
Bird&Be
Chirp
Chirp develops passive health monitoring solutions for seniors aging in place. Chirp’s AI algorithms continuously monitor sleep patterns, walking speeds, sedentary behaviors, and more using privacy-preserving radar sensors. Changes in baseline behavior are flagged as predictors of health problems. This enables home health providers, payers, and families to intervene earlier and improve health outcomes. Chirp was accepted into the HAX Accelerator 2021, finalist in Lions Lair 2022, finalist in Age-well National Impact Challenge 2022, and was recently deployed in HeathTech Home Pilot Project by The Brenda Stafford Foundation.
Homecare Hub
Homecare Hub is creating small, high quality 2-12 person care homes on-demand for seniors at 30% lower cost than traditional nursing home options through a turnkey, scalable, tech enabled system that matches patients by characteristics such as language, care needs, etc. The world will move from large nursing home facilities to a distributed network of high quality, hyperlocal, small care homes, and Homecare Hub will fuel this change by unlocking unused community capacity and splitting home care through a first of its kind Airbnb like host & senior housing technology platform.
Hyivy
Hyivy Health creates a data driven pelvic rehabilitation system for the 1 in 3 women worldwide who will experience a pelvic health complication in their lifetime. Our system provides the first quantifiable data set on the pelvic floor by using our Floora device to conduct 3 different therapies, which are tracked using multiple biosensors helping patients and their clinicians treat, track and predict pelvic floor conditions and symptoms.
Linda Lifetech
LINDA is an AI-based platform created to help in the early diagnosis of breast cancer, the type of cancer that most affects and kills women worldwide, with a new case every 29 seconds. Through an image captured by LINDA and a powerful neural network, in just 15 seconds, doctors receive information about the patient’s breasts. The tool gives the indication of lesions and/or abnormalities that could represent a tumour and recommendations for additional tests if necessary.
Lyfe MD
LyfeMD is a holistic digital solution able to treat digestive diseases that saves 130 million North Americans from life-altering pain, symptoms, unneeded medications and unwanted hospitalizations. It is a B:B offering, paid for by pharmaceutical companies, that provides a platform of integrated digital and human care to patients at no cost that increases standard treatment efficacy to the patient by greater than 40%, and ensures anyone with a mobile phone or computer has access to the highest quality evidence-based care. LyfeMD’s CEO was chosen as one of the top 30 female entrepreneurs by the51 venture group in 2022, LyfeMD is a top 10 Start-up TNT company and is attending the last session of Creative Destruction Lab-Prime Stream in May.
Neuraura
Noa Theraputics
Noa Therapeutics is a preclinical biotech company leveraging a systems biology approach to accelerate the design of tailored multimodal solutions for complex inflammatory diseases. Leveraging their discrete expertise in skin and wound therapeutics, Noa’s scientific entrepreneurial team are advancing a first-use case in Atopic Dermatitis (AD). Noa’s lead multimodal therapeutic, NOA-101, will simultaneously address three constructive therapeutic targets to address a range of unmet needs while readily displace multiple major players within the $5.0B, 10.1% CAGR, US Market;paving the way for pipeline expansion into >$70B inflammatory disease markets.
Steadiwear
Steadiwear is a Canadian tech company dedicated to enhancing the lives of those with Parkinson’s disease and Essential Tremor. Their flagship product, the Steadi-Two glove, effectively reduces tremors and is inspired from advanced earthquake engineering. Steadiwear is creating a comprehensive range of advanced tremor products to help restore independence and improve quality of life to all those who live with hand tremors around the world.
Tenomix
Tenomix is revolutionizing the way cancer tissues are processed in pathology laboratories using robotics, ultrasound imaging and AI. Tenomix’s current patent-pending platform technology automates an existing manual search process for lymph nodes in surgically removed cancer tissues, which will make the process less labour intensive, less costly, and more reliable for pathology laboratories, resulting in better informed treatment decisions for cancer patients.
Vessl Prosthetics
Waive the Wait
Women’s Global Health Innovations
Women’s Global Health Innovations (WGHI) is a for-profit social enterprise researching, developing, and manufacturing differentiated period products to disrupt the multi-billion dollar menstrual product market. The developer of the world’s only physically anti-bacterial menstrual cup, the Bfree Cup, WGHI is delivering innovative, environmentally friendly, user-centered and evidence-based products that are positively impacting the lives of girls and women globally, irrespective of where they are born, level of education, or socioeconomic status.
AYA Payments
Managing Life
We improve the lives of people with chronic pain through our clinically-validated digital solution, Manage My Pain. As the most downloaded and top ranked pain app on the market, we help people self-manage their condition and get the treatment they need. As a result, we lower the cost of chronic pain for insurers and health systems.
Interested in learning more about our Impact Investor Challenge programming?
About Spring Activator
A certified B Corporation®, Spring Activator is a global incubator, accelerator, and advisory firm that empowers entrepreneurs, investors, and entrepreneurial ecosystem builders to change the world through innovation. With its advisory services, it has helped over 70 different incubators, accelerators, foundations, and governments across 5 continents enhance their capacity to maximize impact both in their local communities and globally. Through its impact programs, Spring has helped more than 2100+ entrepreneurs and raised over $30M in funding. Provided training support for over 170+ impact Investors. More information available at www.spring.is.
About TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good
The $100 million TELUS Pollinator Fund for Good is one of the world’s largest corporate social impact funds, and focuses its investments on for-profit companies and founders committed to driving social innovation. The TELUS Pollinator Fund is an extension of TELUS’ long-standing commitment to leveraging the power of technology to drive positive social and environmental outcomes for all Canadians by funding the development of solutions for transforming healthcare, caring for our planet, supporting responsible agriculture and enabling inclusive communities. To learn more about the TELUS Pollinator Fund, please visit: telus.com/pollinatorfund.
For media inquiries please contact:
Kristen Perry, Managing Director, Spring Investment Collective | kristen@spring.is
François Marchand, TELUS Media Relations | francois.marchand@telus.com
