Vaughan Emerges as an Epicentre of Health Care Excellence in Canada

Innovatingcanada.ca
Sept. 29, 2021
Janice Tober and Tania Amardeil

In an innovative partnership, the City of Vaughan creates a health innovation hub for Canadians.

Community health care services and innovation are urgently needed in Canada, especially as the pandemic persists. Our federal government aims to double the size of the health and biosciences sector and become a top-three global hub by 2025.

To this end, the City of Vaughan is creating a health innovation hub, anchored by Canada’s first smart hospital. The Vaughan Healthcare Centre Precinct (VHCP) is a ground-breaking public-private partnership between the City of Vaughan, Mackenzie Health, ventureLAB, and York University designed to improve the health and health care of citizens in the York Region and GTA through research and innovations in public policy, services, technology, clinical practices, processes, and treatments, and to train the next generation of world-class health professionals.

A smart hospital for the future
The $1.7 billion Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital opened in July 2021, marking the first new hospital to open in Ontario in over 30 years and the first hospital in Vaughan. The hospital is vital as an anchor for the VHCP’s development of the remaining lands.

“The remarkable technological innovations make this hospital stand apart from the rest,” says Vaughan Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua. “It’ll generate over 1,000 jobs in the community and has the ability to adapt over time as new technologies and industry standards emerge.”

The hospital is home to specialized programs including Mackenzie Health’s Woman and Child and Inpatient Mental Health programs and the Inpatient Integrated Stroke unit. It also offers a full-service emergency department, core services such as critical care and medicine, modern surgical services, and advanced diagnostic imaging capabilities.

“Through fully integrated systems and medical technology that share information, we are ultimately improving the patient experience to provide the best possible care to our patients,” says Mackenzie Health President and CEO Altaf Stationwala.

The VCHP represents an unprecedented partnership that will transform health care delivery for Ontarians while developing talent, increasing jobs, and powering economic prosperity.

The next generation of health talent
In May 2021, it was announced that partner York University is moving forward with plans to establish a School of Medicine, which will be an important part of the VHCP project.

As a research-intensive university, York is also home to centres of research excellence in global health, healthy aging, muscle health, anti-microbial resistance, disease modelling, health informatics, vision research, neuroscience, data visualization and advanced robotics, among others.

“York University has long been committed to establishing a community-focused medical school to help address Ontario’s unmet health care needs,” says Rhonda Lenton, President and Vice-Chancellor of York University. “We look forward to continuing to build on our partnership with the City of Vaughan and our collaboration on the VHCP to expand access to modern medical education that considers the social and economic determinants of health to enhance prevention and rehabilitation.”

Entrepreneurs create transformative solutions for health care
Commercialization partner ventureLAB is a leading global founder community for hardware technology and enterprise software startups and scaleups. Its growth-oriented initiatives focus on raising capital, commercializing technology and IP, talent retention, and customer acquisition, enabling founders to scale quickly.

Through the VHCP, ventureLAB will leverage the success of its Hardware Catalyst Initiative to enable founders to build innovative medtech solutions. “Vaughan is a leader in health care innovation,” says Melissa Chee, ventureLAB’s President and CEO. “We look forward to working with scale-ready tech founders building a new generation of anchor Canadian companies with transformational hardware and enterprise solutions.”

Innovation York, York University’s innovation unit, will also partner with ventureLAB to foster collaborative innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities in Vaughan.

The VCHP represents an unprecedented partnership that will transform health care delivery for Ontarians while developing talent, increasing jobs, and powering economic prosperity.