Event Speakers
Johan Hjertqvist
Manager
Timbro Health Unit
Stockholm, Sweden
Johan Hjertqvist is the Manager of the Timbro Health Unit, a division of the Timbro Policy Group, in Stockholm, Sweden. Timbro Health is a new operation, which since 2001 has advocated market influence and consumer power in health care. Mr Hjertqvist has a background in health care policy and welfare entrepreneurial activities. Since 1999 he has led a four-year-project analysing the transformation of health care in the Stockholm region. The first report from this project was published in 2000 ("The health care cultural revolution") and the second one in November, 2001 ("A journey to the moon - or a flop?"). His next books, due in 2002, will describe Swedish health care reform and discussion for an international audience, and introduce new ideas for the future health society.
Mr Hjertqvist also acts as an adviser to the Greater Stockholm Council, specializing in market infrastructures where purchasers and providers can meet. Creating new arenas was also the idea behind his projects, conducted between 1995 and 1999, to bring private health care entrepreneurs and contractors together to strengthen the impact of market pluralism.
He is a frequent international lecturer on health care reform. He writes newsletters and is a member of international health care networks and institutions such as the Healthcare Consumer Policy Network, The Frontier Center of Winnipeg, Canada, and the Russian Federal Institute for Welfare Reform.
Mr Hjertqvist has a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Stockholm. In the late 1970s he was instrumental in the founding and building of the Timbro Policy Group, for a long time the sole think tank in Sweden (and still the most influential one). He was editor-in-chief of the NPT, another Timbro operation and the first Swedish news agency to promote business and economy material. During the middle 1980s he belonged to a small group of entrepreneurs starting the first private Swedish risk capital market. He also worked as a Senior Counsellor at the Burson-Marsteller Communications Group. Between 1991 and 1994 he was deputy Mayor of his home town of Tyresö outside Stockholm. He is engaged in Internet projects related to consumer power in health care as well as the development of local democracy. Parallel to his Timbro Health engagement he runs his own consultancy agency.
Mr Hjertqvist is the author of a number of books on politics and health and has contributed to anthologies on similar subjects.
John Langstaff, Ph.D.
President & CEO,
Cangene Corporation
Dr. John Langstaff has 15 years experience in the business of biopharmaceuticals. He became President and CEO of Cangene Corporation on November 1, 1995 when it amalgamated with Winnipeg-based Rh Pharmaceuticals Inc., a company in which he had been Research Director, Vice President Research and Operations, and President and CEO. Cangene has grown rapidly under his direction. Cangene is on Deloitte and Touche's Fast 50, Profit's Fast 100 and the U.S. list of the fastest 500. It has also been recognized as one of the best places to work in Canada.
Dr. Langstaff is actively committed to the development of science and the healthcare industry in Canada. As well as memberships in various industry organizations, he's a past chair of BioNet (a national biotechnology organization), he founded the Healthcare Products Association of Manitoba, and he co-chairs the Science and Technology Committee for the Economic Innovation and Technology Council of Manitoba. Dr. Langstaff has extensive experience in the healthcare sector and the management of public companies
Hubert Manseau
President and Chief Executive Officer
Innovatech
Hubert Manseau, a certified Information Systems Professional (ISP), completed a master's degree at the University of Montreal in 1974. He has spent most of his career in the information technologies. He served as director of computer services at the University of Quebec at Montreal, director of information systems development at Videotron, Canada's second largest cable company, director at DTI Telecom, a telecommunications engineering firm, and executive vice-president at the Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal.
At the same time, he successfully launched two computer programs and played an active role in decentralizing technologies at the University of Quebec at Montreal and the Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal (Computer Research Institute of Montreal).
Mr. Manseau serves on several boards of directors, including Toon Boom Technologies, SuralForm and VIP Switch. He is a member of the advisory committee of the T2C2 partnership fund in Montreal. He was a founding member of Quebec's first Internet network and served on several other boards of directors, including Canarie (Canadian Advanced Network for Advanced Research in Industry and Education). He is the current president of Réseau Capital, the Quebec venture capital industry association.
Michel Ré
Executive Vice President, Investments
BDC Business Development Bank
For more than 25 years at the Bank, Michel Ré has been responsible for providing financing to small and medium-sized businesses, in addition to consulting services. He has occupied a variety of positions within the Bank, thus gaining an in-depth knowledge of the needs of entrepreneurs in many sectors of the economy. As the Executive Vice President, Investments, he is responsible for all the Bank's subordinate financing and venture capital activities.
Mr. Ré obtained a bachelor of administration degree from l'Université du Québec à Montréal in 1973. He is the current governor of the Quebec Venture Capital Association and a member of the board of the Canadian Venture Capital Association.
Dr. Ian C Smith
Director General
Institute for Biodiagnostics
National Research Council Canada
Ian C. P. Smith is Director General of the Institute for Biodiagnostics at the National Research Council in Winnipeg. He began his university education at United College (now the University of Winnipeg), 1956-1958. He then obtained a B.Sc. (Hons), 1961, and an M.Sc., 1962, in chemistry at the University of Manitoba, and a Ph.D. (1965) at the University of Cambridge in physical and theoretical chemistry.
After postdoctoral years at Stanford University and Bell Laboratories, he began his career with the National Research Council in Ottawa where he carried out research in applications of complex physical methods to problems of biological and medical significance. He was Director General of the NRC Institute for Biological Sciences, 1987-1992.
In 1992, he returned to Winnipeg to build a new NRC institute, the Institute for Biodiagnostics. His current specialty is early diagnosis of cancer using magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy. He is an Adjunct Professor of Physics and Anatomy, and an Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of Manitoba, where he supervises the research of graduate students; he is also an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at the University of Winnipeg.
He has been honoured by fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada, the Chemical Institute of Canada, and the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. He has honorary doctorates from the University of Stockholm, Sweden, the University of Winnipeg, Brandon University, and an honorary diploma from Red River College, Winnipeg. From the Chemical Institute of Canada, he has received the Merck and the Labatt Awards, from the Canadian Biochemical Society the Ayerst Award, and from the Spectroscopy Society of Canada the Barringer and Herzberg Awards. He has received the Flavelle Medal of the Royal Society of Canada.
He is active in international, Canadian, and Winnipeg affairs. He is Chairman of the Manitoba Health Research Council and a member of the Board of Governors, University of Manitoba. He was a member of the General Committee of the International Council of Scientific Unions, and President of the Biophysical Society of Canada. He currently chairs NRC's Committee on International Science, Engineering, and Technology and is Vice President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics. He is a Member of the Premier of Manitoba's Advisory Board on Economic Development. He sits on the Board of Directors of a number of high tech companies and venture capital firms.
Smith is a strong believer in the interdisciplinary approach to the solution of scientific and medical problems. He has assembled a large team of researchers with a very broad disciplinary base, including physicists, chemists, theoreticians, engineers, biologists, and physicians. His goal is to establish a rational basis for the diagnosis and treatment of disease in humans, and to use this knowledge to advance the state of health and economic viability in Canada.
