What's New In Digital Health

Happy Birthday Canada! We’d like to celebrate today by sharing our appreciation for the Canadian government programs for all of their contributions towards new and growing companies like MetaOptima. With so many wonderful accomplishments, we’d like to take this opportunity to talk about how amazing Canada is for building innovative technologies that will have a global impact!

On this special day, we believe it is important to share how new, small or growing businesses can take advantage of these funding opportunities and support networks to compete and attract investments on a global scale. Here are our list of top organizations, grants, programs and networks that can help you on your journey:

1. Research & Innovation Support: Academic institutions and universities are the beating heart of innovation. Supporting this ecosystem starts from supporting students, scientists and researchers in basic and applied sciences. Only one fantastic example of this opportunity is Mitacs Canada, a non-profit, national research organization that manages and funds research and training programs in partnership with universities, industry and government in Canada.
   
   A second example is the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) is a Canadian government agency that provides grants for research in sciences and in engineering. A third and final program of benefit is the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), which is the major federal agency responsible for funding health and medical research in Canada.
   
   
2. Building Your Business Sense: Once you’ve created your idea, these programs encourage scientists and engineers to build companies based on their educational expertise. This actually allows entrepreneurs to jump on learning about business so that they can take their initiative.  For example, SFU Venture Connections, New Ventures BC and other BC Innovation Council programs provide training, workshops, webinars, and seminars to help entrepreneurs build a solid foundation to their business.
   
   
3. Building Innovative Products: Additionally, there are programs that support companies to keep working with university programs and to keep on innovating in order to be positioned at the top of the wave when the global wave of innovation passes by.
   
   A fantastic example of this is NSERC Engage Grants, as this helps businesses identify talent from schools, build relationships with research labs, and find students that can become full-time employees. It is a low risk process with high rewards, as it helps companies identify excellent students that can be the good fit for their teams.
   
   When building the actual product, it is important that you receive the funding necessary to create your ideas. NRC IRAP and Eurostars are essential players at this stage, as they allow entrepreneurs to afford to create and develop their innovations. As a result, this allows new businesses to navigate to a position where they can fully compete in the global market.
   
   
4. Commercialization Support: Just as important as building your product is the need to commercialize it and grow your business. Three programs that excel in this area are CDMN Soft Landing, CanExport, and Going Global Innovation.
   
   Soft Landing provides travel support for companies to initiate relationships with key partners in other countries for research-based projects. CanExport supports Canadian companies like ourselves through trade shows and initiating local relationships to help build key connections to support exporting Canadian products. Third, Going Global Innovation provides funding to support Canadian Innovators seeking foreign partners for the purpose of establishing a collaborative R&D agreement.

Built on a wonderful ecosystem for innovation, we hope this article helps other innovative companies build their path and understand the options the Canadian government offers to support their business. We are excited to utilize our new investment towards the expansion and global implementation of our mobile dermoscope, MoleScope, and intelligent EMR software for dermatology practices, DermEngine. We’d like to conclude this article by saying thank you to Canada for providing such wonderful support to visionary people and supporting industries across the nation.

Are you interested in keeping up with MetaOptima's latest achievements? Click the links below! 

• Skip Capital & AirTree Ventures invests $6.8 million  in MetaOptima
• MetaOptima sells out at World Congress of Dermoscopy 2018
• MetaOptima attends SCC & ACDASM
• Maryam announced as newest Mitacs Research Council Member
• Maryam: Startup Grind leader chats about intelligent dermoscopy tools
• Maryam Sadeghi: One of B.C.'s Most Influential Women of 2018

-The MetaOptima Team

Would you like to stay updated on the latest news of MetaOptima and its dermatology EMR solution, DermEngine? Subscribe to our blog! If you're ready to experience DermEngine's intuitive features for yourself, sign up for a demo today!