Over the past few years, the health industries have grown significantly in the province of Québec

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This industry cluster now includes all the stages of new product development, from basic research to marketing, by way of pre-clinical and clinical development as well as the production stage itself.

Québec is home to companies working in the research and development sphere, in the production of brand name and generic drugs, in applied human health biotechnology and in medical technology.

In 2003, Québec accounted for more than 30% of Canadian exports in this area, representing sales of US$2.3 billion (with stats from BIOQuébec).

The province boasts research centres, universities and venture capital investors. All parties team up at InVivo to put into place the conditions necessary for the strategic growth of the biotechnology sector.
Ranked thirdrd in North America, Québec comes right after California and Massachusetts, in terms of its network of biotechnology companies, according to the Ernst & Young report, Resurgence 2004.
Québec is also home to more than 40% of the Canadian companies in genomics and enjoys a solid infrastructure thanks to McGill University and the Genome Québec Innovation Centre.

As a leader in research, Québec accounts for 68% of Canada’s prescription drug patents, 42% of Canadian investment in pharmaceutical research and development, 32% of Canadian subsidies for peer review medical research and 27% of private Canadian investment in biotechnology.

Montréal InVivo is the brand name for metro Montréal's Life Sciences cluster, a complete ensemble of over 475 private companies and 150 public and university-based research organizations. Not only does Montréal InVivo offer the lowest operating cost in North America for Life Sciences, but it is also the only place in Canada, and one of the few in the world, where a company can carry out every phase in the creation of a new drug, from basic research to marketing.

In fact, Montréal InVivo ranks eighth in North America among large metropolitan areas in number of jobs, hiring over 40,500 skilled workers. The creative cluster also boasts four universities and ranks first in Canada for the number of research centres and total funding for university research. It occupies second place in North America in terms of the number of university students per capita.

Génome Québec, which was founded in 2000, financially supports major genomics and proteomics research initiatives and is a major Québec initiative to promote research and the development of genomics in human health, forestry, agriculture, fisheries, the environment and bioinformatics.