Investing in Innovation to Transform SCI Care
Q&A with Arushi Raina, Chief Investment Officer, Praxis NeuroVentures, and Director of Innovation, Praxis
Turning promising research into solutions that make a meaningful difference in people’s lives remains one of the biggest challenges in healthcare innovation. In the spinal cord injury (SCI) field, this requires more than scientific breakthroughs. It takes collaboration across research, clinical care, lived experience and investment to ensure innovations address real needs and reach the people who can benefit from them.
Arushi Raina, Chief Investment Officer of Praxis NeuroVentures and Director of Innovation at Praxis, brings experience in healthcare innovation, commercialization and mission-related investing.
In this Q&A, Arushi shares her perspective on Praxis’ unique role in advancing SCI innovation, the importance of incorporating lived experience into investment decisions, and the opportunities to translate Canada’s research strengths into real-world solutions.
Praxis is known for working at the intersection of research, healthcare and innovation. What unique role does Praxis play in helping promising ideas become real-world solutions that improve the lives of people living with spinal cord injury?
Praxis is truly interdisciplinary. Across the healthcare research and innovation landscape, I know of no other organization that brings together leading clinical expertise, lived experience and innovation talent in one place.
This model has demonstrated significant value. By bringing these perspectives together, we are better positioned to identify and advance solutions that address real needs and work in real-world environments. After six years of operating our accelerator, 18 solutions are already in use within the disability community.
You have helped pioneer mission-related investing within the SCI sector. Why is it important for organizations like Praxis to invest not only in research, but also in the companies, start-ups and innovations that have the potential to drive meaningful impact at scale?
Every investment made by Praxis has included perspective alongside clinical value from people with lived experience (PLEX). This is critical. We need more investment decisions to be driven by PLEX to ensure that the solutions receiving funding genuinely advance the SCI field and reflect the priorities of the people they are intended to serve.
When I entered the SCI field in 2019, one of the biggest challenges was the perception that previous investments in SCI had not only failed but had also overlooked the priorities of people living with spinal cord injuries.
There is also a longer-term opportunity for organizations like Praxis. When a start-up succeeds, there is potential to reinvest returns from those investments back into our mission, creating further opportunities to advance meaningful innovation.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the opportunity for Praxis to generate new innovation, intellectual property and investment opportunities that strengthen Canada’s health innovation ecosystem?
What many people may not realize is that Canada’s research expertise in neuroscience and spinal cord injury is among the top three in the world.
With advances in medical technology, Canada has an opportunity to translate this research strength into intellectual property (IP), generate revenue from these innovations and retain ownership of IP that can be scaled to transform the lives of Canadians.
The benefits also extend beyond spinal cord injury, creating opportunities to improve outcomes across the broader disability and ageing communities.
What do you think is missing between developing a promising health innovation and seeing it adopted in real-world care, and how is Praxis helping bridge that gap?
Beyond funding and clinical trial capacity, I think we are still allocating too much capital to solutions that may not have clear commercial or patient value.
The sooner we direct our limited resources towards projects that align with genuine patient and clinical needs, the faster we can make progress together in transforming healthcare.