91Ó°ÊÓ

Brampton Venture Zone brings together Amplify Care, 91Ó°ÊÓ School of Medicine and 91Ó°ÊÓ Integrated Health Centre to explore how healthcare innovation can move from promising ideas to real-world primary care adoption.

Healthcare innovators are developing new solutions using artificial intelligence, digital health and other emerging technologies. But developing the technology is only part of the challenge. For an innovation to make an impact, it must respond to a real healthcare need, fit clinical workflows and have a viable pathway to testing, adoption and scale.

On October 5, Brampton Venture Zone (BVZ), part of 91Ó°ÊÓ’s Zone Learning ecosystem, convened participants from Amplify Care, 91Ó°ÊÓ School of Medicine, 91Ó°ÊÓ Integrated Health Centre and BVZ for a Primary Care Pathways Workshop focused on how innovation can better reach primary care.  also led participants on a tour of the IHC, highlighting the thoughtfulness behind its design.

Connecting innovation to real primary care needs

Primary care teams are navigating significant pressures, including administrative burden, workforce capacity and access to care. Technology can help reduce workload, improve workflows and create capacity, but promising solutions can face barriers before they reach clinical practice.

During the workshop, participants explored challenges including privacy and compliance requirements, EMR integration, limited resources for testing and implementation, change management, and funding structures that can be difficult for early-stage companies to access.

Start with the problem, not the technology

A central theme from the discussion was the need to build healthcare innovation around problems experienced by clinicians, care teams and patients.

Participants explored ways to surface and prioritize those needs more systematically, including gathering challenges directly from clinicians, mapping existing solutions, giving innovators greater exposure to clinical workflows, and strengthening feedback between healthcare users and technology developers.

Reverse pitching was one approach discussed: rather than beginning with a startup pitching its technology, clinicians and care teams bring forward real challenges for innovators to respond to. This could help direct entrepreneurial talent toward demonstrated needs and reduce duplication in already crowded areas of health technology.

The workshop examined six areas that can influence whether an early-stage healthcare solution progresses toward clinical adoption:

• Co-creation — identifying meaningful problems with clinicians and care teams.
• Use cases and workflow fit — understanding how a solution works within real clinical environments and how its value will be demonstrated.
• Readiness — preparing startups across product, business, privacy and compliance requirements.
• Pilot resourcing — ensuring clinics and innovators have the capacity and support required to test solutions effectively.
• Innovator terms — establishing clearer expectations around data, privacy, intellectual property, evaluation and post-pilot decisions.
• Long-term capacity — creating repeatable ways for healthcare organizations to evaluate, adopt and scale innovation.

Together, these areas represent an important gap between startup development and healthcare scale-up. For early-stage healthtech founders, successful commercialization requires more than building a strong product. It requires understanding healthcare problems, validating assumptions with users, demonstrating value and preparing for implementation in complex clinical environments.

Innovation has to fit the way healthcare works

Another recurring theme was the importance of workflow, implementation and change management. A technology may be promising, but adoption depends on how well it fits the realities of delivering care.

Amplify Care shared perspectives from its work with primary care teams and technology companies, highlighting the role of co-design, evaluation and continuous clinician feedback. The conversation reinforced the need for innovators to consider practical questions early: Does the solution fit the workflow? What changes will adoption require? How will value be measured? What support will a clinic need to implement it successfully?

Bringing healthcare and innovation communities together

The workshop brought together complementary perspectives from across the ecosystem. BVZ works with early-stage founders and innovators; Amplify Care brings experience in primary care, digital health implementation, co-design and evaluation; while 91Ó°ÊÓ School of Medicine and 91Ó°ÊÓ Integrated Health Centre contribute clinical, research and educational perspectives.

The discussion identified opportunities to continue bringing these communities together — including more systematic ways to gather challenges from clinicians, connect healthcare needs with innovators and create forums where both groups can work through real problems together.

For BVZ, this is part of a broader focus on strengthening healthcare innovation in Brampton by connecting innovators earlier to the people, problems and real-world environments that can help turn promising ideas into meaningful impact.