Saint John, New Brunswick, July 9, 2024 – MedReddie, a company using AI to transform medical technology procurement and improve health system outcomes, has raised $782,000 (CDN) in its oversubscribed pre-seed round. Bootstrapped until this point, the first investors include BDC’s Thrive Lab, The Firehood, Forum Ventures, New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, Angel investors, as well as government grants.
After spending more than a decade immersed in the complex world of multi-million-dollar healthcare contracts in Canada and abroad, MedReddie’s Founder and CEO, Kara LeBlanc, realized the opportunity for innovation. She was surprised to learn that within the procurement process, it can take several months to identify medical suppliers, develop due diligence requirements and the evaluation criteria that meet hospital needs. Furthermore, this process required hundreds of full-time employee hours, including time from key healthcare providers.
“I founded MedReddie because I knew there was a better way to help healthcare organizations acquire the technologies and services they need while also supporting medtech suppliers with new marketing channels,” said Kara LeBlanc, Founder and CEO, MedReddie. “We’ve built a platform that simplifies the process, saves considerable time and resources, and ultimately allows healthcare professionals to focus on what matters most: patient care.”
The AI-powered healthtech startup streamlines medical technology evaluation and purchasing, capitalizing on a global procurement software market size valued at $6.6B in 2022 and is projected to more than double by 2026.
“Kara brings the perfect combination of smarts, strategy, and attention to detail that a founder needs to excel and impress,” said Danielle Graham, Co-founder, The Firehood. “Her company is
already trialing on both sides of the market (buyers and suppliers) with paying customers and have established solid partnerships with strong brands including Medtech Canada and others within the US hospital system,” added Claudette McGowan, Co-founder, The Firehood.
MedReddie will leverage this investment to fuel its multi-pronged market expansion. This includes continuing its growth across Canada, targeting the US hospital system, and exploring opportunities in international healthcare markets. This expansion will be driven by enhanced product development, including AI-powered features, and strategic team expansion.
“Access to care is a growing challenge in Canada,” said Sevrine Labelle, Managing Director, BDC’s Thrive Lab. “MedReddie is reinventing outdated processes to enhance value-based healthcare procurement that is proven to reduce costs, wait times, re-admission rates and create greater capacity. We are thrilled to be one of their first investors to help them scale and continue to drive their important social impact.”
Seizing on the opportunity ahead of them, the company is already gaining traction. This success is driven by a talented and experienced team with a diverse range of skills and an unwavering commitment to MedReddie’s mission. Earlier this year, the company was one of only three Canadian startups that earned a spot in Google’s North American Women Founders accelerator program. Last year, the company won the Elevate Festival’s inaugural Women + Pitch Prize.
“We are grateful for the unwavering strategic support from our investors, partners, advisors and mentors at BDC Thrive Lab, The Firehood, Forum Ventures, New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, and Angel Investors, who are helping us achieve significant growth,” LeBlanc added.
About MedReddie
MedReddie is revolutionizing healthcare procurement and medtech marketing with its AI-powered B2B SaaS platform. By leveraging proprietary large language models, including specialized medical domain LLMs, MedReddie streamlines the process for both healthcare providers and medical suppliers. For providers, it acts as an intelligent co-pilot, enabling rapid identification of market solutions and facilitating faster procurement decisions. For suppliers, MedReddie provides a powerful marketing channel, connecting them directly with key decision-makers and accelerating technology adoption. www.medreddie.com.
For more information
Tara Wood, tara.wood@bdc.ca, 416-301-5724
