Life Sciences and Health Technologies
Greater Montréal is one of eastern Canada’s most influential life sciences centres, ranking first in Canada for university research with $2B in annual funding.
Sectors of excellence
Rare diseases, health technology, personalized healthcare, digital health and artificial intelligence are just some of the city’s sectors of excellence. Montréal also enjoys a reputation worldwide for its advances in oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, neuroscience and mental health, infectious diseases, aging, cellular therapy, regenerative medicine, medical imaging and cytometry as well as precision medicine.
Redesigning life sciences with artificial intelligence
Greater Montréal is emerging as a global center of excellence in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning. Its life sciences and health technologies sector is keeping pace. Montréal is home to several top AI accelerators and incubators that are helping develop tomorrow's breakthroughs in the life sciences, with nearly $2.8B in investments between 2018 and 2020.
Homegrown success stories:
- Imagia: a firm that uses AI to develop radiomics biomarkers and clinical decision support systems is now one of the biggest companies in North America.
- TransMedTech Institute: a living lab which supports the accelerated development of next-generation medical technologies.
- Mila: the world's largest academic deep learning research center recognized for its contributions to modeling language, machine translation, object recognition and generative models.
A unique life sciences ecosystem
Greater Montréal’s life sciences sector can support all stages of product development from research to marketing. Pfizer, Novartis Pharma, Abbvie and Merck are just some of the world’s most influential life sciences companies that have their Canadian headquarters here. Our life sciences sector and the Montréal InVivo industrial cluster include more than 620 organizations, 8 post-secondary institutions with over 50,000 university and college students enrolled in life sciences and health tech-related programs, as well as over 46,000 skilled workers in private companies and several thousand researchers in public organizations.
The country’s top research centres
Life sciences professionals from around the world find fertile ground in Greater Montréal. Montréal has developed an innovative approach to fostering collaboration between companies, research centers and public institutions to make it one of the world's largest life sciences hubs. Recognized research centers include:
- The University of Montréal hospital research centre (in French, the Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal or CRCHUM)
- The Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC)
- The CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and child university hospital center
- The Montréal Neurological Institute and Hospital (McGill University)
- The Montréal Heart Institute (Université de Montréal)
The CRCHUM is one of the largest hospital-based research centres in North America and an international reference for academic medicine and research.
Major events
- 24th International Conference on AIDS (AIDS 2022)
Attendance: 13,000
- 2023 World Congress of Neurology
Attendance: 8,000
- 2023 Congress of the International Council of Nurses
Attendance: 6,000
- World Federation of Hemophilia - World Congress 2022
Attendance: 2,500
- 40th Congress of the Société Internationale d'Urologie (SIU 2022)
Attendance: 3,000
- 2023 ISTH Annual Conference
Attendance: 8,000
- 2025 ISPOR Annual International Meeting
Attendance: 5,000
- 24th International Conference on Emergency Medicine
Attendance: 3,000
- STI & HIV 2025 World Congress
Attendance: 1,500
