Carlos Parajon

Talking with Philip Settimi, MSE MD was a reminder that reliability is one of the most powerful forms of innovation. With over 25 years of experience and 3 billion data points, PartsSource delivers data-driven insights that power smarter purchasing decisions and measurable cost savings. The result is more uptime, more capacity, and more care delivered with the same resources. Seeing the company’s “mission control” platform in action, where hospitals track and optimize every critical device, was a glimpse into the future of hospital operations. It’s practical, scalable innovation built around the realities of how care gets delivered every day.

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After more than two decades of investing in healthcare, I've learned three things: be patient, resist trend-chasing, and wait until timing makes sense. With experience on dozens of boards, witnessing thousands of pitches, navigating frothy portfolio activity, and surviving the dud markets while waiting on good ones to return, I know that time and timing is key for success in healthcare investing. The challenge is, how do I convince LPs that the wait will be worth it? Peek at Relentless Venture Fund diversity of companies that span regenerative medicine to software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD), includes a repeat entrepreneur who practiced medicine, to technical founders who figured out IP rights in a way that only newbies to the industry would contemplate. The beauty of diversified portfolio construction, regulatory and risk balance. Deep bets take time. That's the opportunity in healthcare investing. BC has structural advantages that make deep bets work. World-class science from The University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, BCCA and our research hospitals. Clinical trial facilities such as the new Phase 1 Clinical Trial Unit at Providence Health Care. Provincial commitment to the innovation ecosystem such as the government's participation in Aspect Biosystems' $200M, multi-year project to ensure a world class team thrives in a world class facility in our province. What would further amplify our potential? Procurement strategies that let BC companies prove themselves locally before going global. As a member of DIGITAL's investment committee, I evaluate and advance private/public partnerships that derisk technology and accelerate commercial adoption in BC and across Canada. These collaborations are shortening the path from lab to market. Timelines for liquidity in healthcare may be longer than other venture sectors, but the wins are foreshadowed years ahead. Canary Medical Inc. locked in a commercial partnership with Zimmer Biomet before regulatory approval. Aspect secured a $2.6B partnership with Novo Nordisk on pre-clinical data. Two BC founded, Relentless portfolio companies. It will be approximately one decade from our original investment in Aspect to their first human clinical trial. I am not fussed by the timeline. Each strategic partnership and validation of data by customers sets the stage for a high value exit. The beauty of investing in healthcare innovation is regulatory timelines are getting shorter and costs are dropping; innovation is expediting discovery, diagnosis, treatment and care options never imagined when I started my VC career. I know deep science takes time, and patient capital wins. And when they do, BC has an opportunity to capture value that historically flowed south. With the right policy support and patient capital aligned, we can continue to build category defining healthcare companies that scale from our province, not just launch here and relocate. Life Sciences BC

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This amazing story of developing a breakthrough treatment for liver and other cancer patients follows Lumira's well-trod path for Healthcare VC investment success - (1) find great technologies in underserved regions (Michigan in this case), (2) back and augment promising teams, (3) be creative to bring supportive and deep-pocketed investor syndicates to the table, (4) stay involved, (5) realize liquid returns for Lumira's investors, (6) always focus on the patient. HistoSonics represents Lumira's 6th unicorn in the past 7 years.

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Medtech is having a moment, and the data in both reports suggests it is more than cyclical. Bain puts medtech buyout deal value at an estimated $33 billion in 2025, nearly doubling the prior year, with volume up nearly 20% to 88 deals. Blackstone and TPG's $18.3 billion take-private of Hologic accounted for more than half of that total, and Carlyle's acquisition of Vantive, the renal care business carved out from Baxter, was another signal transaction. Bain notes that medtech has shown outsized growth since 2020 and that investors are successfully deploying proven value-creation playbooks centered on revenue growth, margin expansion, and multiple expansion through carve-outs and public-to-private structures. Healthcare IT produces the highest MOIC in Bain's analysis at 2.3x median, but medtech's 1.9x median and 17% IRR across buyout deals since 2017 reflects a maturing and credible asset class with durable return characteristics, particularly in large-scale transactions where PE ownership adds genuine operational value. McKinsey's operating environment analysis adds the demand context. The shift of care to ambulatory and home settings, expanded ASC procedure approvals, and the Rural Health Transformation Program's $50 billion in technology-linked federal funding all create sustained device and infrastructure demand. On the risk side, Section 232 tariffs and most-favored-nation pricing introduce real cost exposure for manufacturers with global supply chains. The companies that anticipated supply chain localization are structurally better positioned than those responding reactively. The executive talent angle here is one I watch closely. The most sought-after leaders in medtech right now are those who built operational resilience during the COVID-era supply chain dislocation and who have since demonstrated the commercial acuity to drive growth in an ASC and home-care-led market. That combination of supply chain credibility, site-of-care commercial fluency, and technology integration experience is genuinely rare at the platform CEO and COO level.

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