On February 20, 2025, several members of the MEDTEQ+ community were able to attend the second edition of the Industry Leaders Series, presented in a friendly atmosphere at Espace CDPQ. This time, it was Roche’s turn to take center stage, sharing with participants how the multinational hopes to “Advancing patient care through innovation and partnerships.”

Hosted by Annie-Kim Gilbert, President and CEO of MEDTEQ+, Lorraine Hurding, Global Head of Partnerships – Strategy and Transaction, Roche Diagnostics International, and Matheus Vieira, President and CEO of Roche Diagnostics Canada, generously shared Roche’s different perspectives on the future, the key principles underpinning their partnerships, and their vision on the importance of digital transformation to support efficiency and propel improved healthcare for patients.

 “We are convinced that data can help us to be more efficient. At Roche, we are firmly committed to ensuring that our systems incorporate a true data strategy. By investing in upgrading our infrastructure and integrating artificial intelligence, we can move faster and generate more accurate and compelling results for direct patient care,” said Matheus Vieira, President and General Manager of Roche Diagnostics Canada.

 

“As a leader in digital health, we have a huge opportunity in Canada to leverage our local initiatives or pilots for our worldwide strategies. For Roche, collaboration is a huge part of our strategy. By supporting the pilot from smaller companies having more agility and velocity to accelerate the development of their innovation and keep track on what they are doing, we can better understand what works well. Partnering is not an easy conversation, but we need to invest in creating these relations at an early stage. The journey can take time or even, at one point, take different paths, but we need to keep encouraging it. For Roche, we will look for projects that are aligned with our focus areas.” Lorraine Hurding, Global Partnering Lead – Strategy and Transactions, Roche Diagnostics International.

We would like to thank all participants and Roche Diagnostics Canada for their support in organizing this event, as well as Espace CDPQ.

Speakers’ Biographies

Lorraine Hurding

Before joining Roche in 2009, Lorraine practiced as a Forensic Accountant providing professional services to clients in complex financial modeling, forecasting, business valuations, sensitivity analysis, litigation support, mergers and acquisition, due diligence, and as an expert witness in quantification of financial damages.  Since Lorraine joined Roche in 2009, she has worked in market research, sales, marketing, & commercial operations at the Canadian pharmaceutical and affiliate.  She has worked in the Personalized Health Care (PHC) space since 2015.  Lorraine previously held the role as Country Lead, Molecular Information (FMI) in Canada, where she was responsible for developing and implementing the marketing, sales and operations strategies in Canada for Foundation Medicine.  In 2019 Lorraine joined the PHC Pharma Ecosystem team based in Basel as Affiliate Lead, Health Systems Partnership.  Currently Lorraine works in our Global Diagnostics Partnering organization as a Strategy and Transactions Lead.  In her current position Lorraine sources partnership opportunities, builds and leads deal and diligence teams to evaluate opportunities & negotiate agreements to access promising innovations across our different business & customer areas.  Lorraine holds a Bachelor of Accountancy degree with honors from the University of Waterloo and is a licensed Chartered Professional Accountant and Chartered Business Valuator in Canada.

Matheus Vieira

Matheus Vieira, President and General Manager of Roche Diagnostics Canada, holds a degree in Pharmacy and Clinical Chemistry from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, a Master’s in Genetics and Biochemistry from Saint Louis University, USA, and an MBA in Strategic Marketing from Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), Brazil. With over 20 years of industry experience, Matheus has led commercial, access, and marketing teams across the medical devices, oncology, and diagnostics sectors. His career has been defined by a commitment to driving innovation closer to patients through strong multisector partnerships and people. Prior to his role in Canada, Matheus held a variety of regional and global leadership positions across Brazil and Latin America, Switzerland, and Finland.