The Ontario government is giving $2.5 million to help fund the Ottawa operations of a multinational health-tech firm that makes blood-testing technology that can help detect the presence of such conditions as kidney disease and heart failure.
Siemens Healthineers is spending $20 million to increase manufacturing capacity at its local facility on Brookfield Road. The project is expected to create 93 jobs over the next five years.
The province said the new funding from the Ontario Together Fund will help Siemens Healthineers boost production of the test card used in its epoc blood analysis system.
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The system is a handheld wireless device that measures oxygen, carbon dioxide and pH levels in patients’ blood as well as their lung functions to help doctors diagnose the cause of breathing difficulties.
The company says the device can deliver “lab-quality” results in less than a minute.
Major expansion in progress
Siemens Healthineers says it’s planning to add two manufacturing lines and new automated packaging equipment that will allow it to turn out 2.4 million cards per month in Ottawa, 125 per cent more than it’s currently producing.
“This funding will help us with our expansion plans over the coming years as we add more manufacturing capacity,” Mathias Ganzmann, Siemens Healthineers’ vice-president of site operations, said in a statement.
“This is a boost for our Ottawa employees and our work in supporting the health-care sector and all the front-line workers doing such important work in Ontario.”
The company, which has more than 350 employees in Ottawa, is in the midst of a 24,000-square-foot expansion of its Brookfield Road facility to accommodate the ramped-up production. Construction is slated to be finished late next year and the expanded plant is expected to be fully operational by the spring of 2024.
