HealthTech Ignite Calgary 2025: Insights from Alberta’s HealthTech Community
On June 19, we hosted our first HealthTech Ignite event in Calgary. Attendees enjoyed a Canadian healthtech market overview by Pender’s own Meryeme Lahmami, a fireside chat with Erkan Akyuz from Circle Cardiovascular Imaging and a scale up panel featuring leadership from Strata Health, Orpyx and PurposeMed. In this post we highlight some key takeaways from the event.
HealthTech Market Update and Trends
Speaker: Meryeme Lahmami
Canadian healthtech raised $334 million YTD, up 45% from last year, thanks mainly to a few large deals early in the year. While it’s too soon to call it a full turnaround, the momentum is promising. However, deal volume remains low, indicating a slow start for early-stage companies. Exit activity has been minimal, limited to small asset sales, and the IPO window in Canada remains closed, though the U.S. market is showing some signs of revival with IPOs like Hinge Health and Omada Health.
In her presentation, Meryeme also examined a few trends. AI is driving margin expansion for tech-enabled service companies, and AI first businesses promise to push that margin even higher. However, the AI native businesses have yet to prove they can grow efficiently or obtain their promised margins. It will be interesting to track the different players in AI and healthcare and see which models have long-term success.
Fireside Chat with Erkan Akyuz, CEO of Circle Cardiovascular Imaging
Panelist: Erkan Akyuz
Moderator: Meryeme Lahmami
Erkan drew on a long career scaling healthcare technology to share insights with our audience. Some favorites were:
- Culture needs to be set with intention. Model the behaviors you want and make hiring and, when necessary, firing decisions that nurture culture.
- Hire people who are smarter than you. A CEO should build an executive team with expertise that exceeds their own and trust them to execute.
- Match your financial strategy to the cycle. Capital markets oscillate between rewarding growth or EBITDA. Know what part of the cycle you are in and act accordingly.
- Adapt fast, strategy isn’t static, evolve with the markets and move alongside them.
Scale-Up Panel: Real-World Growth Stories
Panelists: Peter Smith, John Gardiner and Dr. Breanne Everett
Moderator: Jacob Grainger
Our scale-up panelists took very different roads to growth, yet two shared insights emerged during this conversation.
- Inflection points are key. Orpyx broke through once it secured favorable CPT reimbursement codes and a key distribution partner. Strata have succeeded by building a product that users champion. PurposeMed scaled by creating brands that speak directly to a distinct group of customers.
- Trust is critical to growth. Healthcare sales cycles can be long and risk averse. Whether you are courting your first strategic partner, saving a contract that might churn or serving patients with a need, credibility built over time is critical.
What’s Next
We closed the event the way it started, with networking between the founders, investors and community members who joined us because of a shared interest in scaling healthcare businesses in Canada. Thank you to our speakers, our sponsor, Alberta Enterprise Corporation, and the attendees. We are planning a similar event in Ontario for fall 2025, so stay tuned for details. If you are interested in getting involved, please do not hesitate to reach out.
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