The Globe and Mail covers Synaptive Medical’s ClearCanvas acquisition

When should companies acquire the talent and technology they need to grow?

That’s the question explored in The Globe and Mail’s Decision Makers video series (posted January 20, 2017). Reporters spoke to Cameron Piron, president of Synaptive Medical, and Norman Young, founder of ClearCanvas and now Software Manager for Synaptive’s Informatics division, about their decision to merge the two companies in December 2014.

“Our main product is actually a robotic arm with optics that lets a surgeon better visualize the patient so we’re able to provide a visual map for a surgeon to provide a best pathway to their target, typically a tumor or a clot,” said Piron. “We built our first our first product off of the ClearCanvas architecture. It’s a software system that was open source so we’ve known ClearCanvas for years.”

“ClearCanvas was really predicated on the idea of making medical imaging accessible to people,” said Young. “We already had a very close relationship [with Synaptive], and so for us it was a very  natural outgrowth of that relationship to be able to come together as, essentially, one company.”

“We thought it would be a natural union,” Piron adds. “It was even more natural than we had thought. We were able to launch a new product together within a year.” That product, ImageDrive, pulls together disparate sources of imaging information.

The video is available on The Globe and Mail’s website.