DHiC 19 – Beyond Innovation: Digital Health Startups and Purpose

This transcript was made by AI and may contain minor errors.

John Sinclair: The advice that I would give is the advice that I’m glad nobody gave me.

Katie Bryski: Hello and welcome to Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada Podcast. I’m Katie Bryski.

Shelagh Maloney: And I’m Shelagh Maloney.

Katie Bryski: And for our 50th anniversary season, we have 50 different reasons for you to listen to the show. Reason number 37. We go behind the scenes and meet the people behind Canada’s health technology.

In today’s episode, we explore what does it really take to build a digital health startup and not just survive, but truly thrive? Two leaders at the forefront of digital health innovation unpack the lessons behind the buzz, what it takes to grow a business with purpose. And evolve as a leader along the way.

We are so thrilled to welcome Mark McAllister, CEO, and co-founder of VeroSource; and John Sinclair, president and CEO, Novari Health. Welcome to you both. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Mark McAllister: Thank you, Katie, for having us.

Shelagh Maloney: So let me start and, and John, this whole podcast idea came as a result of you and I having a conversation at one of our Digital Health Canada CHIEF executive forums, talking about the challenge that is around starting a company in the digital health space.

But one of the things that we do in the podcast is we wanna listen to your story, but we also wanna hear about your career journey and your leadership. So John, why don’t we start with you?

John Sinclair: Yeah, happy to. You know, listen, I started off in high school. I was on a high school debating team. It just occurred to me and throw that in conversation.

And from there I went on to a degree in political science of all things, hoping one day to be a politician. But as I learned more about being a politician, I sort of pivoted away from that and used those same skills for business. Worked in the United States, uh, for about 11 years with a technology company, worked in Monaco for a year at out of university and ended up at a company, which you and I know today as Novari Health.

It was a journey, and I think when you’re starting up with your career where you think you’re going in your career, while it’s good to have a destination in mind. You are not going there, you’re going somewhere else, nine times outta 10. And I’m very happy with the destination that I ended up with, which is not where I thought I was going.

Katie Bryski: Funny you say that, John, because I think nine out of 10 guests that we’ve had on the podcast have started and ended in different places maybe than they were expecting. And Mark, I saw you smiling throughout, so why don’t you tell us about your path?

Mark McAllister: Very familiar winding path, I think to Johns. I have a computer science background, so I, I graduated from University of New Brunswick.

Right around Y2K and went to work at Nortel Networks in Ottawa with very, I was very excited about the prospects of leaving New Brunswick and starting out in the big city. And I lasted for, uh, six or eight months or so before Nortel came crumbling down around me. And it, it was certainly, yeah, a change of path for me along the way.

And, uh, I was fortunate though to, to move back to Fredericton and to find my footing here. And I ended up working at a large consulting company. I got to be in the back building and architecting some of the digital health systems that Canada Health Infoway at the time was really pushing towards EHRs and those types of things and, and I got to spend almost seven years building that as part of my journey.

Certainly not where I thought I’d end up when I was graduating university, but it, uh, it led me to where I am now. So very thankful for the opportunity and the, and the road rash as they might say.

Shelagh Maloney: I love that road rash. We all have it. Let’s talk a little bit about where you are now, Mark. So you were working for a large company.

When did you sort of say, eh, I can do this better, I can do this on my own, or I wanted to start up on my own and maybe talk us a little bit about what that looked like.

Mark McAllister: Yeah. Like I mentioned, it was, uh. A time when I was helping to build a lot of these backend systems and I had a, a much younger family than I have now.

So it was maybe 2010, 2012 timeframe. And all of this, uh, investment was being put into the backend of our healthcare system. And when I took my young daughter to the hospital, we really saw none of the benefit. We really saw none of that value for patients. I got quite frustrated with the whole system and I decided I, I could do it better.

And uh, we actually started VeroSource in 2014, you know, a year or two leading up to that, trying to get off the ground. But it’s really that moment of thinking, you know, we can be more nimble, we can do things differently, and maybe an altruistic start to VeroSource to try to make an impact for patients back when we started.

Katie Bryski: Yeah. I find too, a lot of folks that we’ve talked to have had that personal connection. If they’ve seen a challenge, they feel compelled to try and address it. John, did you have something similar? Like did you have a moment when maybe you thought, okay, politics isn’t for me, but I’m gonna put it all on the line for health care?

John Sinclair: No, that’s not really my story, although I hear that all the time from people that had a father that was in the health care system, or they were themselves or a family member. That’s not how I came to it. I came to it because officially I was working in Tucson, Arizona on a work visa, and I managed a team of subject matter experts.

That were scattered across the United States, and I could travel as much as I wanted to. I could be on the road all year. The company would’ve loved it, but it was impacting my personal life, and I decided I needed a break from that. So I left that company because I didn’t want to travel as much, and I had moved during that period to a small community north of Kingston, Ontario that I loved.

So I started looking around what? What’s in Kingston? I had never worked in Kingston. I was new to the area and I reached out to a few people and they said. You know, there’s a startup in Kingston that’s struggling a little bit, but they have a good idea. And so I actually rang them up. There were only four people.

I, um, got their phone number and I rang them up and I spoke to the then CEO one of the founders, Dr. John Marshall. We hit it off. I then went and I did something, which today would not be possible, but back in. 2009. It was possible I went to a local hospital where I knew some people and I asked about the software before I even met the company and someone showed me the software and showed me how they used it and raved about the software.

And I thought, wow, okay. They’ve got software that has, um, fit for market. It’s new, it’s not being used at pretty much any hospital yet. Only a handful were using this, the technology. And I thought, wow, this is a great opportunity. It’s here in Kingston, and guess what? I won’t have to travel very much. I arrived at the company and the first thing I did is started traveling for the company and going to hospitals across the country, showing them the software.

So that’s how I came to it. I think my employee number is five or something. We were, when I got there, four people, a dog and in a basement. Not quite that bad, but pretty close. And we rebranded. We turned it around and it’s been a great ride.

Shelagh Maloney: A huge ride. And one of the things that you said that. You did back then that you wouldn’t be able to do today.

And, and that’s one thing is sort of walk into a hospital and I mean, it’s still a lot about who you know, and, and I think that’s the frustrating thing that we hear from a lot of startups is they don’t understand the Canadian healthcare system or they don’t know anybody and it’s hard to get in. I’m curious.

So Mark here, New Brunswick, relatively small community relative to working for a large organization. So how much of your success could be attributable to just talking to people and getting in there and knocking on doors, and did it help that you had that background? And did you have connections that you could count on and pull?

Mark McAllister: Yeah, I think this industry really is built on trust. I got to meet a lot of people during my consulting days and, and really I think built that trust and those relationships. And as we grew, we found that it was difficult to scale those circles of trust beyond our borders. There’s a lot of technology out in the world.

We’ve all built really interesting things, but when it comes down to it, the buyer really has to believe that you’re gonna deliver and that you’re gonna be there for them through the the ups and the downs of these implementations. We established that really well, I think in New Brunswick over the years.

And then as we scaled, we had a decision make to make whether we wanted to try to buy that circle of trust or hire salespeople outside of New Brunswick and beyond and into the states or to join a bigger company. So we did make that choice to join a, a larger company with similar values and a much bigger reach.

Last year we joined HEALWELL AI and again, it’s, it’s all part of that building. The circle of trust is the way I look at it.

Katie Bryski: It occurs to me like there must be different types of challenges and considerations at different stages in a startup’s life. Right? From John, you mentioned like four people in a dog in a basement, to, as you start to scale and as you maybe start to look at working with or partnering with other organizations, can you talk about.

What those different challenges look like at different parts of a startup’s life?

John Sinclair: That’s a great question, Katie. So when you’re a startup, there are different phases. I arrived during the, clearly during the startup phase, where we had a really good team that understood the problem that we were solving for in the hospitals, which at the time was weightless management of patients that were queuing for surgery, trying to get the right patient scheduled at the right time, and manage the lists and help hospitals understand how many patients are waiting.

How many of ’em are cancer patients? How many are orthopedic patients? How many are general surgery patients? Whose list are they on? And so then they can start to manage the problem. And we were ahead of the curve by a few years, which is good and bad. It gives a head start. But also we were selling something new into the hospitals and um, hospitals and health authorities are very, very conservative organizations, right?

They only wanna buy from trusted organizations. And so we were new. So how do you get in the door? It’s really, really tough. I’m often asked by other people that are starting up healthcare technology companies, you know, would you do it again? And what are the challenges? And one of the challenges is from a startup perspective, is that from the hello to the signing of a contract is at least three years.

And so how many startups have enough money invested in the business that will allow them to survive three years without making a sale? That’s often a challenge. It’s faster in the United States to take your business and go south of the border, but it’s a much more competitive market and healthcare system is completely different.

So you need to decide what markets you serve, and then you need to make sure that you’ve got enough cash on hand to make payroll to get there. So we went from startup to scale up, and then we just, this summer we actually joined a vital hub, a much larger organization, which was good. It was good for our investors who were angel investors, who threw money in to support our mission.

They understood what we were doing. They liked the problem that we solved, and like me, they thought it would be quick. Back in the 2003 to 2010 sort of, they thought we would be a rocket ship and we would take off not really understanding. How the sales cycles work in healthcare in Canada. Very, very slow, very conservative.

They have their own competing interests and they’re drowning in patients. And, uh, the daily demand of running a, a hospital. It’s hard for them to stop and take a breath and look up above the trees and then convince their colleagues of it, of the solution and then get the money in their budgets. And so it’s a really tough system.

We look at the number of companies that started around the time that we did, and I would say 95% of ’em are no longer in business. So the companies that survived survive for a number of reasons. There is the element of luck, but there’s fit for purpose. Your software has to be integratable. Now, starting now, I can’t imagine we didn’t have to be ISO back then.

We didn’t have to be SOC 2 compliant. Privacy wasn’t, it was a thing, but it’s nothing like now. If you’re a startup with 2, 3, 4, 5 people, very, very difficult to, to tick all those boxes and get a new technology in place.

Mark McAllister: Our story is similar again to John’s. Maybe the difference here is that we bootstrapped VeroSource.

So we had, we had some mentors early in my career who turned away some, some money, which made my life very difficult at the time. But, uh, looking back was absolutely the right move. We talk about employee numbers. I, I wasn’t on payroll for the first, I think three plus years, so I kind of worked a day job and, and did the night job.

And I’m sure lots of people have these types of stories, but in order to bootstrap it really meant we had to have. Paying clients to support. So we had our first employee in on payroll and we had lots of government subsidies to get him working away. And we actually had a handshake deal with a potential customer that would be our first paying gig.

And that fell through and we actually had the layoff employee number one. And he stuck around and a, a year later when we actually did land a contract, he was able to come back and we, you know, these ups and downs are extremely hard to deal with when there’s no money coming in to feed your family. I’d say that was, uh, a very, very tough few years and lots of times we felt like giving up and, uh, really thankful that we didn’t.

Again, uh, it’s a journey through it. I’m not sure if I’d have the energy to start one of these again, honestly, in the new climate, as, as John mentioned. There are ways in, like, I really believe that if you have a, a good idea and B, the resilience, there are ways to navigate the system. And I know there’s, there’s other tools out there and, and networks to join that can allow that process to take place.

Shelagh Maloney: So startups clearly not for the faint of heart. Lots of obstacles, lots of challenges. Let’s sort of talk about now the positive. Like was there a time, was there a day you woke up and said, ah, we’ve made it?

Mark McAllister: Shelagh, probably something that you may remember that trip that we went on together back in, in the day to Summerside, PEI was a big day for us where we were recognized as a, as an industry validator for, uh, an Access Atlantic type of program where we had done some proof of concepts in New Brunswick that was looked on favorably in, in the Canadian landscape on getting people access to healthcare information.

It was really a moment where we were looked on. I guess as a leader in the space and that led into. An RFP win that was really solidified us as like a, a multi-year company. And then when COVID hit, we were ready and that’s when our company really scaled and, and we became something more than even we had expected.

So it, I’d say there were multiple of those wins along the way. It’s really nice to reflect on them instead of maybe focusing on some of the forests or the weeds that we work with on the, on the daily basis. So it’s nice to look back on those moments.

Shelagh Maloney: I suspect that’s part of the journey is, and I remember that fondly, that trip to PEI with the then federal Minister Petitpas Taylor, I believe at the time, was there.

That was a big day for all of us. John, what about you to just sort of have a day that you said, Hey guys, the mortgage is gonna get paid this month. We’re good?

John Sinclair: Yeah. There was one day, and we know we we’re now 130 people, so we’ve, we’ve signed lots of contracts across the country with individual hospitals, health authorities, uh, ministries of health.

But back in the day. A year or two after I joined, when we had rebranded and we’d done a bunch of things, the phone rang and we had bid on a project with a LHIN And a LHIN is, they no longer exist. LHINs were a pseudo regional health authority in the province of Ontario. And I got a phone call saying, congratulations, you won the RFP.

Seven hospitals, were going to implement our solution simultaneously. It was a massive project. We had to hire people right away. I think we went from five people to 10 people on that one contract, and it was really the start. That was the aha moment. But having said that, we are so exhausted at the end of an RFP process.

I say three years, but it’s often five years. From the time we say hello to the time we sign a contract, the client will do an RFI. We’ll submit a 200 page document for that. The client will then wait a year and do an RFP. We’ll submit a 300 page document for that. Then, we’ll, if we’re selected, we’ll have to negotiate and do demos and everything and, and then sign a contract, and you would think that we would like sign a bell or something.

There’d be some type of celebration. All there is is exhaustion. At the end of the process, you’re just thankful that the procurement’s over and now you can work with the client and have that really good relationship and that partnership and. Those are the moments that don’t happen, but kind of happen, if you know what I mean.

Mark McAllister: I just wanted to layer on to John’s comment just a little bit. I, I feel like we’ve, over the years, lost that celebratory time as well. When we have the wins, they just kind of pass by instead of us stopping and, and reflecting. And I, it’s actually something we’ve been speaking about as a leadership team recently that we need to.

Reinvigorate that culture of celebrating wins because people work hard and it’s often thankless. The, the one thing, and I’ll, I’ll just share briefly around company culture, and John probably has a similar, similar story here, but people come to work at VeroSource because they have maybe worked elsewhere where they’ve been.

Maybe moving money from one place to another or just a cog in a wheel. And at a digital health company and at VeroSource we have people who get to see the work that they do make an impact for real people. And so people come and are generally excited to have a purpose in what they do. So that makes company culture certainly, uh, easier to talk about way we have to work hard.

But you can see the benefits of it in your community and beyond.

John Sinclair: It’s the same for Novari Health. We had a consultant come in and look at our business recently, and the consultants team at the end said they’ve never seen retention like they see at Novari. And so the question was why? And so they started asking some of the team at Novari and the answer that came back overwhelming was.

I like the mission of the company. I could go work somewhere else and make the same money, but we’re improving access to care for patients. Everyone knows someone on a wait list in Canada for something, whether you’re waiting for a hip replacement or whatever you’re waiting for, and the idea that we can help fix that, we can improve that.

It’s not lip service. I often describe us as healthcare workers that don’t wear scrubs and that the patient will never see. We did have a couple of patients over the years reach out to us. One patient’s family reached out to me personally. They were speaking with one of our clients. It was a, a mental health use case of our software where we were acting as air traffic control for all of the patients in the Mississauga Halton region.

We still do that with them. Great client and um. Someone asked them, how did their son, I’m trying to remember the exact story. How did our son get access so quickly to the right provider? And they said, oh, you know, it’s done through the central intake program run by Mississauga Halton and Halton Healthcare.

And in a conversation with them, they slipped that they use a technology called Novari and I got a note from the family. Thanking us. Uh, you know, who does that? Who knows the technology company in the background. But it was really moving, especially if you understand the challenges that mental health and addiction patients face from coast to coast to coast in our country, it’s very hard for them to find the right provider or multiple providers that they need for care.

So there are those little snip those moments where it really resonates. But to hear that back from a consultant who’s engaging with our staff, not influenced by me or the leadership team. This is honest opinions being given by the staff. So we’re healthcare workers. We just don’t go to a hospital.

Shelagh Maloney: And it’s interesting, I’m actually at a patient engagement forum today, and one of the panelists earlier today, we’re talking about getting the patient voice out there. It was all about stories and it’s all about telling the stories, and so what a great story. You know, mark, I saw something that you posted on LinkedIn recently.

It was around, it was a newspaper article that one of the ladies who was posing with her, her son, who was just a, pretty much a baby at the time. Do you wanna maybe tell that story too?

Mark McAllister: It’s funny, the, the article is actually mislabeled, so it, it was labeled to mention the, the spokesperson for our company at the time, but that’s actually my wife and my son in the picture.

My son is now 14 and taller than I am, and the article was from 2015 and it was about the first app we built and it was all about wait times in the hospitals. And, and we knew we couldn’t get access to some of that data, so we went and we gave people access to share the wait times in the hospital. So the, the app was actually called wait share, and like I mentioned earlier, we were quite altruistic and realized pretty quickly there’s actually no way to make money off of this idea.

As we were bootstrapped, that was a pretty big problem for us. But we did get some notoriety and some attention. And the picture from the paper was us talking about, Hey, you can tell your friends or you know your neighbors where to go get care. And the challenge in our system sometimes is that newcomers or people who aren’t really connected into the network in our system have no idea how to navigate this world.

Fast forward 10 years later, 2025. We in New Brunswick just launched a real-time emergency department dashboard that shows the length of stay and the amount of people in the waiting room. And that’s done not based on historical data. It’s actually we have real-time feeds. HL seven feeds coming from the hospitals.

And then we use machine learning to actually determine based on admits, discharges and transfers, how many people are actually waiting. We don’t have perfect data. We, we don’t have triage in some of the hospitals, so some of that will get tuned and improved as we go on, but it really is a full circle moment for me to have that decade.

And John was mentioning three years, you know, here we are 10 years after that newspaper article was published, finally getting some of that information live, but. It’s a large change management process and even talking to politicians or ministers and whatnot. I think 10 years ago there was maybe more a reluctance to give some of that data out to people and maybe some concern around patient safety and which are still really valid concerns.

But what we found, we did a study with Sinai Health around how people use digital front doors and my health mb the anxiety is actually being taken down. It’s not being driven up. When you give people access to more information, people are smart. They navigate a lot of the sites and and expect kind of real-time information, and when you give it to them, they make better decisions.

Not all the time. There are certainly outliers, but overall I think this last decade has been a push forward to allow people to get better access to their information and make better decisions.

John Sinclair: I’ll just jump in with that too. Certainly our story and Mark, it’s probably the same for you. A lot of the problems that we’re trying to solve with digital technologies are not unique to Canada.

They exist, especially in other single payer systems. So we now do work in Ireland, in the UK, Australia, and they have the same problems, slightly different variations of the same problems. Patients are queuing too long, there’s more demand for the healthcare services. Then there’s capacity to deliver in a timely fashion.

So it becomes really important now to manage the process, manage who’s waiting. Where are they waiting? What are they waiting for? How have they been triaged and to try to get them to the right provider. I will say though, that one thing that is unique to Canada, not in a good way, and it’s beginning to change.

I can say that now in the last 12 months, but I could not have said it previously, that for the first time we’re seeing procurements come out to buy Canadian or to buy technology where there’s a preference for Canadian made technology. When we sell and we take our technologies to Australia, one of our problems is they bake right into the requirements.

The system must already be live and in use in Australia. Well, the field is stacked in favor of the incumbents, and we don’t do that in Canada, and we don’t use an economic development lens in procurement decisions. But other jurisdictions absolutely do that. And I’ve always been told, oh, it can’t be done.

But now I see it being done and nothing has changed. So I like the fact that. We can take our technologies, homegrown in Canada, sell them abroad, implement them, help solve problems in Australia. We’re doing a big implementation with mental health and addictions, uh, referral management now in England, and you know, most of those jobs come back to Canada.

Now we’re hiring people to support the UK and for multiple use cases as part of VitalHub, we’re now doing work in emergency departments. We’re doing work right across the whole healthcare spectrum.

Katie Bryski: It’s, uh, interesting to have this conversation in the context of some of the other conversations happening both on the Canadian stage and abroad, right.

In terms of the economy. We’re recording this podcast a bit before the federal budget comes out, and you know, we talked about a lot of change over the last 10 years, but even over the last year, like we look at the way the geopolitical situation has changed, particularly the states, we look at new technologies coming out.

It just seems like there’s a lot of change happening all at once, and I’m curious about how you’re seeing startups reacting to that and what some of both the challenges and opportunities for them might be.

John Sinclair: Yeah. Mark and I are both pointing at each other. You go first on that one. Listen, you know what businesses like is stability.

However, disruption creates opportunity to, and I think it is the instability in the Canada US relationship that is causing. Governments now to write into their procurements, into their RFPs, scoring for Canadian technologies. So you get so many points awarded if the jobs are in Canada. I love when that question is asked.

It creates a level playing field against big US corporations. We have domain expertise. We, we really know the healthcare system in Canada. I mean, that’s where we live. That’s what we do. We’re subject matter experts on it.

Mark McAllister: And I think if you’re talking disruption, especially in the, uh, last year or so, you’ve gotta be talking about AI and, uh, new companies are just built differently than mine was 12 years ago when we started, right?

There are different tools. There’s a different expectation for the way we work, and as that collides with a healthcare system. To John’s point that can be conservative and, and move slowly. It’s really interesting to see where we can find those value points and if we can find the value points to line up with timing of need and also that we can build the trust around some of these tools that are not going to be perfect right away and need refinement and need really good data sets.

Sometimes. I’m really, uh, interested in seeing the progress and seeing some of the things. Come to light that will make a difference for clinicians, for health systems, for patients in using AI as we watch it evolve. I guess

Katie Bryski: we’ve talked a lot about some of the challenges. We’ve talked a lot about the mission and the meaning that you’ve gotten from your organizations.

If there was someone who wanted to enter into the startup space, what advice would you have for them?

Shelagh Maloney: Don’t do it. Just kidding.

Mark McAllister: You know, I, I was very fortunate to have mentors along the way when I felt very ill-equipped to be a leader in a company. I, I, a lot of imposter syndrome along the way. A lot of, a lot of times I would’ve given up without those mentors saying.

You’ve gone this far. Keep pushing, keep pushing. And without that mentorship in my life, I’m sure I would, I would not be here. So I would look forward to that opportunity to be that mentor for someone else to talk about that resilience. The, just because the first, second, third time trying it doesn’t work.

That you’ve, you’ve gotta keep pushing that. There’s lots of ideas out there, but it really is about execution. And then the final one for me that really hit home, and this was part of a, a business group that I was a part of as we were getting the company off the ground was so altruistic and I really had no business background.

I, I didn’t even understand my books. I, I didn’t understand anything. I was like, we are going to fix healthcare. We’re gonna, you know, make these big improvements. And the saying that stuck home for me is there’s no mission without margin. So we all want to make a difference, but you have to find a way to build a profitable business that can sustain.

And as we’ve grown, we’ve, we’ve maintained that mentality of having to be a profitable business because when we’re profitable, we can make good decisions and we’re not. Acting from a place of fear or or weakness that we can actually go in and we can make a difference in the world. So that would be what I would share with someone coming up.

John Sinclair: I love this question. Katie and I get asked this question a lot, and I’m torn. I don’t have a canned answer, and the reason is because the advice that I would give. Is the advice that I’m glad nobody gave me. So that’s counterintuitive, isn’t it

Katie Bryski: Much more interesting than a canned answer though, so,

John Sinclair: well, it’s so nuanced because listen, my honest advice would be, imagine going into a room full of investors Lion’s den and you, you’re pitching your business idea, you’re trying to raise money.

And you tell your investors, your potential investors, give me your money. And I won’t know If we’re successful for three to five years, we might not even make our first sale for the first five years. So if you’re going to call me up every month and ask me how our numbers are, that’s not going to work. We need very patient investors, and that’s what Novari had.

Exceptionally patient investors. So if you don’t have that, you better have a fast way to make some money because you’ve gotta pay your payroll every two weeks. Now why am I glad no one told me that? Because we were able to navigate through it by the skin of our teeth and we’re here very successful business.

It’s all good. So I’m glad that someone didn’t talk me out of it, and I try to talk people out of it and if they can survive that talking to, then I know they’ve got the strength to get through it. If they can’t survive the talk. They probably shouldn’t be in the business. The Litman’s test.

Shelagh Maloney: I love that.

So if John Cat talked him out of it, you’re good to go. You know, we, we’ve been ending the podcast. This is our 50th anniversary, uh, edition. And so one of the last questions we ask people, I’m just curious and in one word, what does digital health mean to you?

Mark McAllister: Sure. I’ll go first and, uh, it is actually, it is actually part of our vision statement.

The word empowerment is, uh, it’s overused, but it is certainly something we believe in. And we’re empowering patients. We’re empowering clinicians, we’re empowering the system. And I also, I like to use the word equip as well. You know, it’s maybe a little different than than empowerment, but giving people the tools that they need to navigate our healthcare system, other healthcare systems in the world, is something that’s really rewarding to the people that we.

Get to work with every day. So I will, I’ll go with the, the buzzword empowerment.

John Sinclair: I had one word and it, it’s enabling and it’s not far off your word mark. I think digital technologies, plural, they enable care providers. My significant other is an ICU nurse, so I hear frontline stories every single day at the dinner table.

And I work with so many great people in healthcare across the country that have difficult jobs in a difficult system. We provide technologies that enable them to deliver better care. And if we don’t adopt digital technologies, our healthcare system is not sustainable. We’re just trying to muscle our way through it that long term, that’s really not going to work.

We need to accelerate the adoption of, of these technologies, and we do need to be as a system a little bit more open to taking some risk.

Katie Bryski: And I think that that is such a great inspiring but also challenging note to end on. Something I’ve really appreciated in this conversation is that we didn’t just get to look behind the scenes, but also see that thread connected to the front lines and the patients.

And the people whom our work impacts every day. So thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.

Mark McAllister: Thank you. Thank you.

Shelagh Maloney: Wow. What a great conversation. You know, nice to see success stories and you hear so much about how hard it is. For startups to be given an opportunity in the health risk averse health sector. So you know, for John and Mark to share their stories that were really successful stories. It just, it makes my heart glad.

Katie Bryski: And I think especially in the times in which we live, it’s also really nice to see success stories of innovations happening here at in Canada. And I think sometimes we. As a country can undersell ourselves a little bit in terms of, of the impact we’re able to have and the innovations we’re able to make.

So it’s nice to see like, yeah, stuff coming out of New Brunswick and Kingston and remembering we do have really great talent here and well supported. The impact can be quite significant.

Shelagh Maloney: Well, and I think it’s just, again, if this podcast is about nothing else, it’s about recurring themes and the whole recurring theme is, you know.

I knew there could be something better and I really wanted to make a difference. And, and so I put it all on the line and was vulnerable and had the courage and, and went out there and struggled, but hit one or two lucky breaks and did the right things and was able to be successful and bring it forward.

But it’s that passion and that mission that we’ve heard up so much from a lot of our podcast guests, right.

Katie Bryski: And that willingness not to cling too hard to a predetermined narrative. Like I was thinking of even the very first question we asked where John was saying where he started out and where he ended up, not necessarily what he expected.

And I know we’ve heard that a lot, but I think it’s good to hear that because I think especially for emerging leaders, you kind of have this vision in your head, right, of the ladder and the path that you’ll follow. And maybe I’m projecting, but it’s like, yeah, it is comforting to know that. The long way round or the scenic route.

Sometimes it gives you the experiences and the perspective that you need to be successful later on, even if it’s not quite what you thought you were going to be doing

Shelagh Maloney: well and then, and then, right? The lessons that you learn along the way translate and if you’re so set on your path, you might miss the opportunities and like, I’m heading for this door and I shall not be deterred from that door, even though there’s this great opportunity here that you might be considering.

I can’t remember if it was Mark or John said it, but around this whole idea of what advice would you give somebody or would you do it all over today and is it, is the startup environment or culture different? And I think it was a resounding yes, certainly from John and, and you know, don’t, I would first of all say, don’t take my advice, I think was one of the things he said, or something similar.

Would you recommend somebody to do it? Only if you’re truly committed and recognizing that you know, you’re putting everything on the line and you’ve gotta be committed or you will not be successful.

Katie Bryski: Say that for podcasts because sometimes we get questions from people that wanna start their own, right.

And I always say it’s a lot of fun. It’s incredibly rewarding. It’s a great medium, and it is a lot of work. And I think good too to have help along the way, right? Whether it’s mentors, whether it’s your network, whether it’s organizations like Digital Health Canada that can support and provide education.

And until our next podcast comes out, there’s so many resources on the Digital Health Canada website. There’s the Community Hub, there are white papers, there’s Webinar Wednesdays, so check all of those out over the next month. And until then, thank you for tuning into Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada podcast.

Mark McAllister: Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Digital Health Canada members can continue the

Katie Bryski: conversation online in the community hub. Visit digital health canada.com to learn more. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes as soon as they’re available and tell a friend if you like the show.

We’ll see you next month. Stay connected, get inspired, and be powered.