OBIO held its 2019 Annual Public Meeting on November 25 and included a celebration of 10 years of the organization’s contributions to building Ontario’s health science industry. In addition, we took a look into the future with a presentation from our keynote speaker, Megan Coder of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, highlighting the emerging field of digital therapeutics.

The event, which was hosted at Blake, Cassels and Graydon LLP, started with a networking session for Annual Public Meeing attendees.

Jeremy Bridge-Cook, Chair of the OBIO Board of Directors, opened the formal portion of the event with a presentation examining North America’s health science investment landscape and the rise of biopharma investment to the top of the sector. He also spoke about the investment landscape in Canada, with health sciences receiving a 27% market share and early-stage companies receiving 45% of total investment.

Gail Garland, OBIO President and CEO, then spoke about OBIO’s work to implement the recommendations from the OBEST strategic plan over the last 10 years. The strategy was designed to shape and build Ontario’s health science economy through what OBIO has come to describe as Advocacy, Action and Access. Through the development and delivery of OBIO’s proprietary programming, OBIO’s efforts have led to:

Over $230M raised by OBIO CAAP® companies since joining the program
107 Health to Business Bridge (H2BB™) candidates placed in positions at more than 60 Ontario health science companies and organizations
Over 200 Health MINT™ companies advised and supported each year in total since 2015,
The launch of OBIO Technology Early Adoption (TEA™) program, which will partner companies developing technologies that are ready for adoption with end-user healthcare organizations which can test that technology in a clinical setting

Finally, the evening concluded with keynote speaker Megan Coder’s presentation about the potential of digital therapeutics to change the way clinical care is delivered. Coder addressed the importance of establishing best practices and a code of ethics for this emerging field, and identified some of the issues to focus on when looking toward the future of medicine and health care delivery using digital therapeutics.

See the photo gallery below for highlights.