2026 Agenda

As healthcare organizations face mounting financial pressures, strategic partnership with government has become a critical lever for sustainability and growth. But securing large-scale public support requires more than strong ideas — it demands coordination, positioning, and disciplined execution.

In this session, Raphael will share the inside story of how he helped build and lead a nationally recognized image-guided therapy and artificial intelligence network that expanded across Canada through multiple phases of federal support. From its early formation to the launch of INOVAIT, Raphael will unpack how aligning industry, academia, and government priorities created a compelling case for national scale.

Attendees will gain practical insights into how healthcare organizations can strategically position innovation initiatives, build collaborative ecosystems, and drive economic and societal impact that unlock government partnership — ultimately strengthening long-term sustainability and system impact.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How to position healthcare innovation initiatives so they resonate with government priorities
• Why clustering hospitals, academic institutions, and private-sector partners increases credibility, scale, and likelihood of support
• How running lean, reducing administrative burden, and clearly communicating impact builds trust with government stakeholders and enables long-term collaboration.

Health systems are being asked to deliver meaningful transformation at a time when financial flexibility is increasingly constrained. This session will explore how leading healthcare organizations are pragmatically creating funding capacity to enable digital and operational change—without waiting for new budget allocations.

Drawing on real-world examples, the discussion will examine emerging revenue streams, strategic partnerships, and alternative financing models that can unlock reinvestment while maintaining focus on patient outcomes and system sustainability.

Attendees will gain practical insights into where these approaches succeed, where they fall short, and the critical considerations leaders must address to move from cost containment toward fundable, long-term transformation.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Learn how healthcare organizations are leveraging partnerships, commercialization opportunities, and innovative financing structures to generate new capital for transformation initiatives
• Explore practical strategies for unlocking internal funding through operational efficiencies, value-based initiatives, and disciplined investment prioritization
• Gain insight into the leadership, accountability, and partnership frameworks required to successfully implement alternative financing approaches while maintaining patient outcomes and public trust.

Public sector hospitals have historically relied on government allocations, incremental service expansion, and community philanthropy to fuel growth. But today’s funding constraints, workforce pressures, and rising patient expectations demand a more entrepreneurial approach.

In this session, leaders from the Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN) will explore how a newly integrated public hospital network is redefining business development within the realities of a publicly funded system. From traditional methods such as service line optimization and capital campaigns to non-traditional strategies including strategic partnerships, innovation commercialization, regional collaborations, and alternative revenue pathways, WRHN shares how it is balancing mission, mandate, and market.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Differentiate traditional vs. non-traditional business development approaches within a publicly funded hospital environment
• Understand how WRHN is leveraging integration and scale to unlock new partnership and revenue opportunities
• Identify alternative growth strategies beyond core government funding (e.g., research partnerships, innovation ecosystems, specialized programs, philanthropy alignment)
• Navigate governance and public accountability considerations when pursuing entrepreneurial initiatives in a public system
• Apply a practical framework to assess which non-traditional opportunities align with their hospital’s mandate, risk tolerance, and community needs

Hospitals and healthcare entities across Canada are under increasing pressure to diversify revenue, strengthen community partnerships, and improve patient flow. Coincidentally, retirement living operators are expanding care service offerings that support older adults across the continuum of care.

This session will explore how hospitals can work with retirement living operators to unlock revenue opportunities through strategic partnerships. These opportunities include sponsorships, hospital foundation fundraising support, and partnership-based engagement models that generate incremental dollars for hospitals while supporting discharge planning and continuity of care.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Develop new revenue models by applying the principles learned from real-world examples
• Gain tangible insights into how these collaborations are structured, governed, and activated in practice
• Create an action plan to create lucrative partnerships with retirement living providers

This fast-paced, highly structured networking session where every participant gives practical experience and gets actionable input to move one priority forward (program, product, partnership, operations, care model, conference strategy—anything).

Outcomes (what attendees leave with):

• 1 clarified challenge/opportunity statement
• 4-6 peer-generated ideas or examples to test
• 2 concrete next steps + 1 new connection to follow up with

At some point in the business development cycle, you will need to negotiate the terms of the deal and ensure that the hospital receives an adequate ROI at an acceptable risk. There are many strategies to achieve this, and this panel will discuss what you need to consider as you embark executing your strategies.

From health services, zero spend contracts (commission agreements, JV partnerships, retail food, etc.), and other procurement exempt contracts are where you will likely need to lean in and try to find leverage to better the position for the organization which they represent. 

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Understanding the limitations and the creative flexibility you have in securing a deal
• How to start from a position of strength, and advocate for the hospital’s best interests
• Spotting red flags and how to work around them to everyone’s advantage

In this session, Mandy Woodland pulls back the curtain on how Nova Scotia Health’s Innovation Hub has built a structured, replicable approach to health system commercialization — one that integrates legal and IP frameworks, digital health infrastructure, research consent, and partnership deal structures into a coherent operational model. With the province’s new research consent framework announced as the latest building block, Mandy will walk through how the playbook was developed, what it enables commercially, and the hard lessons learned along the way.

Attendees will leave with a practical framework they can adapt and apply in their own organizations, whether they are just beginning to build a BD function or looking to professionalize and scale an existing one.

Key Takeaways:

• The components of a commercialization playbook — Learn how Nova Scotia Health has built and integrated the key building blocks of sustainable commercialization: IP policy and ownership frameworks, research consent infrastructure, tech transfer processes, and structured partnership models, and how these components work together rather than in isolation.
• From reactive to systematic — Understand how to shift your organization’s approach to commercialization from opportunistic deal-chasing to a proactive, pipeline-driven model with clear processes for evaluating, structuring, and executing commercial opportunities across multiple revenue streams.
• Enabling conditions for sustainable revenue — Discover how investing in the legal, digital, and operational foundations of commercialization — often deprioritized in favour of chasing near-term deals — builds partner confidence, reduces risk, and creates the conditions for revenue that is repeatable and scalable over the long term.

Canada faces a structural shortage of quality community care — and the businesses needed to deliver it are mostly too small, too fragile, or too founder-dependent to meet the demand. But size alone isn’t the answer: growth without the right systems risks trading one problem for another.

This session offers a practical M&A playbook for operators thinking about growth, exit, and real value creation, as well as a due diligence framework for hospital systems evaluating whether a community care partner is built to scale — and built to care.

In today’s funding-constrained healthcare environment, financial planning and analysis (FP&A) must evolve beyond budgeting and variance reporting. Modern FP&A functions play a critical role in shaping strategic growth, evaluating investment opportunities, and enabling long-term financial sustainability.

In this session, Jui Datta will explore how finance leaders can move from reactive financial oversight to proactive strategic partnership. Drawing on experience within Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital, Jui will share how multi-year forecasting, scenario modelling, capital planning, and data-driven decision-making can inform expansion initiatives, support new program development, and strengthen business cases for funding.

Attendees will gain practical insight into how FP&A teams can become central players in business development — translating complex financial data into strategic direction and enabling smarter growth decisions across the organization.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Learn how finance functions can move beyond traditional budgeting to actively support growth and investment decisions
• Understand how multi-year planning and financial analytics strengthen business cases and funding proposals
• Discover how integrated financial planning supports long-term sustainability in publicly funded healthcare systems.