While NASA struggled to resolve whether there has ever been life on Mars, evidently life teems in MaRS, downtown Toronto’s bioenterprise complex. At no time was this clearer than at the HTX inaugural Open House on the morning of 26 June 2008.
HTX, short for htx.ca—Health Technology Exchange, is an Ontario not-for-profit that has helped small and medium-sized companies to research and to commercialize innovative medical and assistive technologies since 2004. HTX recently moved to MaRS from their previous digs in the Toronto suburb of Markham.
HTX also encourages partnering in the life sciences, and is itself quite the partnership, with funding from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, Ontario Centres of Excellence, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the National Research Council Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), among other sources.
Over 150 representatives of government, academia, non-governmental organizations, and science and technology companies mingled at the open house, with several companies on hand to display their products and platforms, including Quanser, featured in the previous issue of Medical Technology Watch Canada (http://www.medtechwatch.ca/6-3_2008/index.html). The Open House coincided with the annual meeting of Ontario’s NRC-IRAP advisors, making the reception even livelier. But in the words of one NRC-IRAP staffer, “There’s an event like this going on here almost every day.”
The event itself featured a video presentation introduced and narrated by IBM’s John Soloninka; speeches by HTX’s Chair, Peter Goodhand; by its CEO and President, Morris “Mickey” Milner; and by the Honourable John Wilkinson, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation. Minister Wilkinson praised the role of HTX in “breaking down the silos” that prevent the flow of money and ideas. Following the speeches was a lively question-and-answer session including the above participants, plus Dan Lynch, HTX’s vice-president of commercialization. Lynch emphasized the opportunity presented by Ontario’s health care sector as an economic engine for the province.
In addition, Dr. Milner noted that despite HTX’s new location in the heart of Toronto, the organization was attempting to spread its presence outside the metropolis, especially since medical technology development and innovation occurs throughout Ontario and Canada. He also addressed the need for the medical-device sector to solicit more input from industrial designers.
Clearly, no shortage of industrial design went into MaRS. HTX’s relocation in this building—dubbed a “Discovery District”—is fitting. Nestled at College Street and University Avenue, at the north end of a long corridor of university hospitals, MaRS is within hailing distance of the University of Toronto’s medical, dental, and engineering faculties; the province’s Legislature; and the city’s financial district.
While innovation was hardly a stranger to the neighbourhood before, having a bricks-and-mortar presence devoted to commercializing high-tech inventions has paid enormous dividends in the three years since MaRS moved into a former hospital building. For evidence of this, you have only to look at some recent journalism. MaRS was prominently in Kurt Kleiner’s article “Toronto Rising,” in Volume 453 of the influential British journal Nature (English only, requires subscription), and was similarly central to Alison Motluk’s “We’ve Got It Down to a Fine Science” in the Globe and Mail (10 May 2008, English only, requires purchase).
Perhaps more telling is the current expansion of the centre, with a planned completion date of 2010.
As to HTX’s location on the lower level of the MaRS building, think of them as the foundation of the medical device sector!
For more information on HTX, please contact:
Marcelle Canido
Communication and Information Specialist
htx.ca – The Health Technology Exchange
MaRS Centre, Heritage Level
101 College Street, HL32
Toronto, ON M5G 1L7
Tel: (416) 673-8480
Fax: (416) 597-1160
mcanido@htx.ca
http://www.htx.ca/
