In February 2020, SE Health, a Canadian social enterprise health care services organization, launched under their initiative The Future of Aging a new book by the same name. Since then their SE Futures research and education team has engaged in a number of other initiatives including collaborations with other organizations such as Covenant in the aging strategy program COURAGE: Action for Better Aging and with AGE-WELL in pitch competitions for example.
So picking up on pitch competitions, fresh off the recent AGE-WELL 2025 National Impact Challenge, SE Health has announced its own second run of the SE Health Chrysalis Innovation Challenge with the pitch finale happening on March 5, 2026. As for the themes that participants can enter, this time it’s simple – Living Well, Aging Well and Caring Well which in fact fits in neatly with the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030).
If you are choosing to enter this competition, you are likely a technology oriented organization, a start-up business or an “early-traction to later-stage” research developer working on a solution that fits one or more of those themes mentioned, and that could be for instance in digital health, assistive devices or service programs. Innovative solutions further developed already in market may also be considered if they demonstrate practical application.
Compared to the 2024 Chrysalis, this event is more streamlined in structure of the themes and categories for participants. With the winner to be awarded $30K, the innovators making the pitches will as before have the opportunity to present and network with investors and other funders and partnering organizations which creates the potential for early-market or market-ready innovations to be in a better position to put to practice their solutions in an AgeTech market.
New to the game or not, you can register for a Pre-Pitch & Q&A Workshop on Dec. 3, 2025 which allows time to pull together a compelling presentation for the application closing date of Jan. 9, 2026. Over the last decade, having attended many pitch competitions in person or virtual and voted in People’s Choice awards, one observation I have is that if you make the short list of finalists, the best use of your time after that is to learn how to articulate and animate your storytelling in front of a live audience.
In addition to that, before you submit your application, spend time to look at what has been happening in the world of AgeTech since 2020. Check out other pitch competitions, those start-ups that won and those that didn’t but have sustained a market presence where maybe the winners have not. What solutions are out there similar to the one that you are working on? How much repetition or over saturation of solutions are there?
Before you delve in you might want to check out these three market maps:
Postscript. The 2024 SE Health Chrysalis 1st place winner was Steadiwear and its hand tremor device, a wearable glove that “empowers users with control, independence, and confidence, redefining tremor management”. This allows better personal control of basic functions such as drinking, eating and handwriting for those living with Essential Tremor and Parkinson’s disease.
