Medical tech hub to advise Ontario companies retooling for COVID-19 equipment

An Ontario medical technology hub will provide manufacturing advice to non-medical companies looking to retool and produce coronavirus-related equipment, through a partnership with the Ontario government.

Medical Innovation Xchange (MIX) is a tech hub that helps domestic “medtech” startups scale up.

MIX will offer free advisory services to recipients of the province’s $50-million Ontario Together Fund, which was established for manufacturers, entrepreneurs and innovators to provide essential supplies and equipment to support front-line workers.

MIX will help to navigate regulatory challenges, avoid mistakes in quality compliance and accelerate the timelines of delivering medical supplies and products to Ontario in order to meet immediate and future patient and health system demands.

Advisory services will be provided by MIX CEOs and the employees of their Canadian medical technology companies including Intellijoint Surgical Inc., Vena Medical Inc., Penta Medical, Bloom Care Solutions, Conavi Medical Inc., KA Imaging Inc., Exact Imaging Inc., Emmetros Limited, NERv Technology Inc. and 7D Surgical Inc.

“We started MIX with the simple promise to ‘pay it forward,'” says Armen Bakirtzian, CEO of Intellijoint Surgical and founder of MIX, in a statement.

“With the first wave behind us, we must be better prepared for what’s next. As restrictions are lifted and Ontario returns to work, our health-care system will be tested again. In order to help keep our front-line workers, health-care professionals, and communities safe, the time is now to build additional critical supplies.”

To date, more than 17,000 proposals have been submitted to the Ontario Together Fund’s web portal, and on May 6 the province announced Oakville-based Virox Technologies Inc. as the first manufacturer to receive money from fund.