The greater Spokane area has long been recognized as a hotbed for healthcare and life science innovation, but things in the region have really begun to heat up in 2020.
The Spokane region is seeing a number of expansions, investments, and development projects that are fueling further innovation and job growth.
One of the most exciting of these developments is the new Selkirk Pharma facility that will be taking shape on the West Plains.
Construction is currently slated to start in August of 2020 with a planned completion date in December of 2021. This impressive $30 million manufacturing facility will be the future home of Selkirk Pharma, a startup contract manufacturer specializing in aseptic vial and syringe filling, laboratory services, and labeling & packaging.
Selkirk Pharma was founded by a team of physicians and pharmaceutical industry leaders with one goal in mind: improve the reliability of drug product supply. Interruptions in drug product supply have profound consequences for product companies, healthcare providers, and most importantly, patients. Selkirk Pharma aims to remedy this by building its operations from the ground up with a singular focus on reliability.
For Selkirk Pharma, the West Plains area of the greater Spokane region was the ideal home for their startup. Their facility is just one of the many development projects currently taking place on the West Plains. Thanks to the efforts of S3R3 Solutions and the West Plains Chamber, the West Plains is seeing tremendous growth. Already home to a variety of large manufacturing and life sciences companies, like Unicep Packaging, the West Plains is the focus of more than $500 million in private development work and the future home to more than 5k new jobs.
Another exciting healthcare start-up taking shape in Spokane is Medcurity.
Medcurity recently secured $700,000 in seed funding to launch a SaaS product designed to help healthcare providers, clinics, and hospitals comply with the ever-evolving and extremely complex federal healthcare laws.
Medcurity guides its customers through a simple series of questions that help an organization self assess their administrative, physical, and technical risks and helps them find a path to remediation of any issues. In addition, Medcurity helps its customers design and create policies and procedures that can help keep them safe and compliant.
Founded by two long-time healthcare industry experts, Joe Gellatly and Amanda Hepper, Medcurity aims to be the TurboTax of HIPAA compliance for medical professionals throughout North America and is off to a roaring start, having landed a number of high profile customers.
These are just a couple of samples of the exciting things happening right now in the Spokane healthcare industry. With more than 20% of the workforce and 22 early-stage ventures focused in health and life sciences, as well as tremendous investments being made in workforce development and training, there is a lot of excitement about what the future holds for the health sector in Spokane.