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Few figures have shaped Canadian medtech as profoundly as Frank Baylis - engineer, entrepreneur, former Member of Parliament, and long-time steward of Baylis Medical. Since 1989, Frank has guided Baylis Medical from a medical device distribution company into a developer and manufacturer of cutting edge medical technologies with a profound global impact. As a testament to the brilliant advances made by the company, in 2022 Baylis Medical sold its cardiovascular branch of devices to Boston Scientific for Corp. for $2.23 billion, with plans to reinvest part of the money into new branches of medical devices in radiology and neurosurgery. Today Frank serves as the co-executive chairman of Baylis Medical, while using his wealth and experience to help modernize Canada’s healthcare system, encourage new medical technologies, and actively support the next generation of Canadian entrepreneurs.
Frank’s journey began after graduating with a bachelors in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo. Shortly after, he joined his mother Gloria Baylis who had incorporated a company called Baylis Medical in 1986. “She was importing and reselling very specialized devices for use in neuro-embolization, invented in France. This was the genesis of neuro-interventional radiology, and Baylis Medical helped bring this technology to Canada.” As the company grew, Frank and his business partner Kris Shah looked to gradually transform the organization into a full-scale designer and manufacturer of medical devices. Baylis described this shift as a deliberate move toward independence because “as distributors, you don’t have control of your own destiny,” a realization that ultimately pushed the company toward in-house innovation and manufacturing. The innovations that have arisen since then have been immensely successful, with multiple divestments of technology leading up to the most recent one worth $2.23 billion, making Frank and Kris arguably Canada’s most successful medical device entrepreneurs. Beyond industry, Baylis has applied his experience to public service, serving as a federal Member of Parliament and supporting healthcare and innovation through philanthropy, occupying a rare position at the intersection of engineering, entrepreneurship, and public policy which gives his perspective on Canadian medtech particular weight.
From Baylis’ standpoint, Canada possesses many of the ingredients needed for a thriving medtech ecosystem, yet continues to struggle with commercialization. The core issue, he argues, lies in how healthcare technology is perceived at the government level. “The biggest challenge we have is that the governments run all our hospitals, and the governments are stuck in a way of thinking that’s antiquated,” he said. Rather than viewing new medical technologies as productivity-enhancing investments, they are often treated as costs to be minimized. Baylis emphasized that in Canada, “we have great universities, great hospitals, and great doctors. So we have a lot of the ingredients to develop new products and we are successful at it. The challenge is making the step from development into commercialization”. In his view, the problem is not a lack of talent or ideas, but that “the government is a barrier rather than an enabler,” failing to “make the link that new technologies actually make us more productive - treating patients quicker, getting them out of hospital faster, and avoiding surgeries.” By changing our mindset from “viewing technologies as a cost rather than an investment,” Baylis believes Canada can better position itself as a global leader in biotechnology and beyond.
Despite these challenges, Baylis is optimistic about the future of healthcare technology. At the top of his list is artificial intelligence, which he sees rapidly reshaping nearly every domain of medicine. “What’s happening right now in health, and it’s ripping through everything, is the use of artificial intelligence,” he said. Alongside AI, he pointed to surgical robotics as a transformative force, reducing reliance on manual skill and enabling greater precision and consistency. These trends build on a longer-term shift toward minimally invasive and interventional medicine - an area closely aligned with many of Baylis Medical’s catheter-based technologies. Whether through AI, robotics, or interventional tools, Baylis sees healthcare moving decisively toward faster, less invasive, and more efficient care.
In reflecting on his career, Baylis speaks through the lens of learning and perspective. “There’s nothing I don’t look back on and ask myself what I could learn from that experience,” he said, emphasizing that progress in entrepreneurship comes from persistence and self-awareness. “I have many regrets, but I don’t regret my regrets.” Building medical devices, he explained, is inherently nonlinear: there is no perfect starting point, no fully planned path, and no way to avoid setbacks entirely. What matters instead is staying oriented toward a clear vision and continuing to move forward while learning all the way. “What I’ve learned is to be persistent, to have a vision, and to put yourself on the right track.”
Baylis’ reflections offer a reminder that impactful careers are built through curiosity, persistence, and clarity of purpose rather than perfect plans. More broadly, his perspective serves as a challenge to Canada itself: to recognize innovation not as a cost to contain, but as an investment in productivity, patient care, and long-term competitiveness. If Canada hopes to build a stronger medtech ecosystem for the next generation of biomedical engineers, we must pair our world-class research and talent with the structures, policies, and mindset needed to translate ideas into real-world impact. In doing so, Canada has the opportunity not only to train excellent engineers, but to empower them to build the technologies that will shape the future of healthcare.