A year into its second iteration, Newfoundland and Labrador medtech support organization Bounce Health Innovation is working with 40 young companies, many in new programs introduced by the group.

Bounce is a few years old and in mid-2020 it unveiled Bounce 2.0, which included the hiring of its first Executive Director, Chandra Kavanagh. The organization last October said it was working with 14 partners, as it calls the companies it works with, and that number has roughly tripled in a year.

What’s more, Kavanagh said these companies have raised millions of dollars in funding and employ dozens of people.

“In our first year of operation, we have now partnerships with more than 40 medtech startups . . . . indicating the enormous potential of our medtech sector in our province,” said Kavanagh in an interview. “It shows that all they needed was a resource centre . . . which was necessary to produce game-changing companies.”

Bounce began in 2018 when several groups – including the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Technology and Innovation, (now called TechNL), the Memorial Centre for Entrepreneurship, Genesis, and Eastern Health Authority – came together to develop life sciences companies. What stood out about Bounce from the get-go was the participation of Eastern Health, the largest health authority in Newfoundland and Labrador, as it meant the medical community had a critical role in developing new products.

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With more of a structure, the group has been able to work with more startups and accelerate their growth with the introduction of new programs.

For example, Bounce initiated a four-month intern program, and the first cohort comprised eight students, who were paid by Bounce to work for partner companies. Two of these interns have since been hired full-time by the startups, and another has begun working on a new startup. Bounce will hold the second cohort of the intern program this fall.

Kavanagh, a PhD with a background in regulatory compliance, also started a program to help young companies understand the complexity of regulatory systems and take steps to begin the regulatory process. The program draws on Bounce’s network of experts who can help founders navigate these often-choppy waters.

Several of the Bounce partners have begun to draw attention, such as, Swiftsure Innovations, Polyunity and Unbound Chemicals, all of which were accepted into the Creative Destruction Lab accelerator. Swiftsure was also the winner of the BioInnovation Challenge last fall, and Bounce companies recently swept the prizes at Genesis’ most recent Pitch and Pick event.

For now, Bounce is focused strictly on the medical technologies, but Kavanagh and her collaborators are considering expanding the mandate to include what they refer to as “the squishy sciences.” These would include other startups in the life sciences sector, like natural products, nutraceuticals and agtech. She noted that organizations in other provinces like Bionova and BioNB cover more than just  medtech and said Bounce may do likewise as it assesses its future.

“Now that we have a year under our belt, we’re working with our steering committee to see what we’ve got going forward,” said Kavanagh. “We’re looking at what we’ll do in the long-term. How do we make it like a Genesis Centre so we will still be here in 20 years and helping the community?”