It takes a special kind of person to be in healthcare. Caring for others takes heart and an enormous amount of patience. At the core of being a healthcare professional is a desire to assist those in need, or to solve a problem.
Those individuals in the walk-in clinics and hospitals want tools to make their job easier and also to correctly diagnose the concern at hand. The latter, those potentially finding a remedy or creating new products, it’s big business.
Many successful Canadian companies have started small and grown to lead this country. Today, Figure1 is one of the more notable startups gaining attention with its social networking app for healthcare professionals, currently having over 125,000 active users.
To enable more Canadians to develop and create new products, MaRS HealthKick 2015, it’s annual pitch competition organized by MaRS Health, is kicking off May 7th. This gives an opportunity for three successful startups to earn $20,000 in prizes.
There will be 39 Canadian early-stage healthcare startups from various sectors (medical devices, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals and health information technology) pining for the investment. Each will have 9-minutes to present their idea to a panel of judges, and a 300-person audience that’s filled with VC’s and investors.
“It is a carefully curated program that brings the best startups in this country to the most discriminating investors,” said Dr. Zayna Khayat, lead of MaRS Health and Director of MaRS EXCITE. “After the huge success of last year’s inaugural showcase, HealthKick saw an increase in the number of entries from other provinces.”
Source: HealthKick