Your Chamber held its monthly Economic Development Council meeting on Monday, April 25 at our Northside Business Center location. This month’s council meeting focused on innovation in the Healthcare and Bioscience Industry in San Antonio. Council members heard from leaders in the industry about San Antonio’s status as a global competitor, current trends in industry growth, and how to increase investment and recruitment.
Heather Hanson, President of BioMedSA, set the stage with information regarding the healthcare and bioscience industry in San Antonio. Key takeaways from her presentation include:
- San Antonio performing as the largest military health complex in the USA,
- Various methods of industry support and collaboration,
- The growth of life science career tracks in secondary education and working with industry to provide proper training to potential workforce candidates, and
- Current actions the healthcare and bioscience industry can take to shape their messaging to increase business/workforce recruitment and retention.
Additionally, Heather shared that the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce is currently working on the 2022 Healthcare & Bioscience Economic Impact Study (sponsorships are still available).
Following Heather’s insightful description of the industry, Council Chair Charlie Weil, VP Transwestern, hosted an all-star panel of San Antonio leaders in healthcare and life sciences. Panelists included:
- Heather Hanson (President, BioMedSA),
- David Fonseca (CEO, VelocityTX),
- Larry Schlesinger, MD (President/CEO, Texas Biomed), and
- Dan Nicolella, PhD (Southwest Research Institute).
Some key takeaways from the panels discussion include:
- The importance of commercial real estate focused toward the healthcare and bioscience sector in the recruitment of new businesses to the region,
- The strength of San Antonio’s healthcare industry being a direct result of collaboration and communication within industry,
- The need for strategic investment from the business community to assist in workforce recruitment, and
- San Antonio’s need to elevate its status as a regional competitor to a global competitor in the healthcare and bioscience industry via uniform and concise messaging.
The next Economic Development Council meeting will be held on May 17, co-hosted with the Texas Association of Business with another all-star panel discussing Texas Competitiveness & Supply Chain Resiliency.
For more information on our Economic Development Council, click here.