Are you a driven entrepreneur who’s passionate about improving the world around you? Then take a look at these two charts:
One shows the growing prevalence of chronic disease at every age. The other shows how much we’re spending per person just to keep up. We are getting sicker earlier, and we’re spending more than ever to treat it. This is a broken system. And as it becomes truly unaffordable, seismic shifts to the status quo are not just likely… they’re inevitable.
This is a generational opportunity to reshape how we approach health and wellness. Newfoundland and Labrador, along with our sister provinces in Atlantic Canada, are building the launchpad for healthtech businesses ready to tackle these challenges.
I believe some of the boldest ideas in health innovation will come from places most people don’t expect. Newfoundland and Labrador is not a traditional healthtech powerhouse. We don’t have a major pharma corridor or a dense population of venture capitalists. What we do have is a hunger to solve real problems for real people. And that’s where innovation lives.
I’ve spent my career helping companies innovate—translating research into real-world solutions, working with startups and established industries to turn ideas into impact. For most of that time, healthcare has been resistant to change. But that tide is turning. A new generation of entrepreneurs is taking on healthcare’s most pressing challenges and things are starting to shift. Words like “patient experience,” “outcomes,”“value-based care,” and “wellness” are moving from the sidelines to the center, backed by smart, scalable technologies.
As Director of Bounce Health Innovation, I’ve seen firsthand how creativity flourishes under constraint. When you’re far from the big centers, you learn to build with what you’ve got. You partner more deeply, listen more closely, and design with intention. You can’t afford to build products that don’t matter. So we don’t.
Our entrepreneurs aren’t just chasing markets, they’re responding to needs. They’re watching parents navigate the healthcare system and asking, “How can we make this easier?” They’re talking to frontline providers and asking, “What would actually help?” That’s the spirit that drives us.
Health innovation from Atlantic Canada is powerful because it’s grounded in reality, driven by empathy, and scaled through collaboration. We’re not just supporting start-ups—we’re growing companies that are changing lives, starting in our own communities and reaching far beyond.
By leaning into our agility, our authenticity, and our connectedness, we’re building Atlantic Canada into the best place in North America to start and grow a healthtech company. And in doing so, we’ll show the world what’s possible when innovation is rooted in care.
We’re not waiting for the crisis to unfold— we’re building the antidote.
