More than 500 Members and Partners gathered for HealthPRO Canada's Partner Summit and 30th Annual General Meeting to celebrate three decades of collaboration while exploring the trends, opportunities, and challenges shaping the future of healthcare procurement. 

Throughout the day, speakers and panelists explored how healthcare organizations can navigate an increasingly complex procurement environment while strengthening resilience, embracing innovation, and delivering greater value for patients and the healthcare system. 

Key Takeaways 

Navigating Canada's Evolving Domestic Procurement Landscape

With Buy Canada and domestic procurement measures evolving across the public sector, healthcare organizations need to understand how to support domestic priorities while maintaining compliant, transparent procurement processes. 

Daniel Fabiano, Partner at Fasken, shared practical considerations for healthcare leaders navigating this changing landscape. Members were also encouraged to seek their own legal counsel when interpreting and applying domestic procurement requirements within their organizations. 

Key takeaways included: 

• Balancing Buy Canada objectives with Canada's domestic and international trade obligations.  

• Understanding how supplier eligibility requirements may affect Canadian and international companies with U.S. parent organizations.  

• Strengthening procurement processes by clearly communicating requirements upfront and applying them consistently to support fairness, transparency, and legal defensibility.  

Strengthening Canada's Healthcare Supply Chain

Global uncertainty continues to reshape healthcare procurement. During the panel discussion, Supply Under Pressure: What's Next for Canada's Healthcare Market?, Kate Harback, Jim Keon, Marcey Quenneville, and HealthPRO Canada's Kendra Frey explored how geopolitical events, tariffs, inflation, and supply chain disruption are changing procurement priorities across Canada. 

The discussion highlighted several key themes for healthcare leaders: 

• Building greater supply chain resilience while maintaining affordability.  

• Leveraging market intelligence to anticipate emerging risks before they become disruptions.  

• Accelerating the adoption of innovative technologies that improve patient care and system performance.  

• Strengthening collaboration among governments, suppliers, healthcare organizations, and procurement partners to build a more resilient national healthcare supply chain.  

As Marcey Quenneville observed: 

"No single hospital, supplier, province, health system is going to be able to tackle all of this alone, so we need to build strategic partnerships with our suppliers, with our GPO partners, like HealthPRO Canada, policymakers, clinicians, to better anticipate the risks that are coming at us." 

Kendra Frey reinforced the importance of working together nationally: 

"We are one country, and we should be functioning as one country when it comes to these healthcare procurements and trying to find the optimal value." 

Looking Ahead 

Closing the event, Christine Donaldson, President and CEO of HealthPRO Canada, reflected on the evolving role of healthcare procurement: 

"The future of healthcare procurement will not be defined by contracts alone. It will be defined by our ability to anticipate risk before it becomes disruption. To turn innovation into adoption. To transform data into action. To help accelerate more integrated models of care, closer to home. And to bring organizations together around shared challenges and shared solutions. Because no single organization can transform healthcare alone. But together, we can. That is the future we are building. And together, we are leading what's next." 

As HealthPRO Canada enters its fourth decade, the conversations throughout this year's Partner Summit reinforced a shared commitment to strengthening Canada's healthcare system through collaboration, innovation, and strategic procurement leadership.