2021 Start-up Innovator of the Year: Alec McCauley

Alec McCauley, President and Chief Technology Officer – Thrive Health

Alec – thank you for all of your hard work and innovation towards patient safety and clinical care meeting the needs of Canadians and residents alike.

 

Alec’s efforts in his capacity as President and Chief Technology Officer at Thrive Health has contributed significantly to the Canadian digital healthcare space. Alec came to Thrive in the spring of 2020, and brought with him much product and software development experience to our team, along with a strategic vision to mature the company to fit the needs of our enterprise product. Alec has acted as a key leader in guiding Thrive to innovate during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading the company to becoming Canada’s go-to platform for enterprise organizations and university campuses to conduct secure symptom screening, PCR & rapid antigen testing, and vaccine status declaration.

Alec’s contribution to Canada’s digital health agenda is demonstrated through Thrive’s core value of “Making healthcare work better for everyone.” At a time when Canadians felt isolated and uncertain about the future, Alec led the development and scaling of a project that would not only help Canadian’s return back to work and school safely, but also acquaint individuals with digital health technology in a welcoming and accessible way. Alec’s work with Thrive has guided thousands of Canadians through their digital health journeys, while helping them navigate the pandemic.

Alec has been a key player in facilitating the introduction of many Canadians to health technologies, furthering the broader goal of advancing digital health in Canada as a whole – and thus positioning the industry for a more effective implementation of health technologies in the future.

The Thrive Health platform that Alec has been instrumental in creating allows organizations to offer their employees a simple, secure tool with which to complete COVID-19 self-assessments, schedule PCR and rapid antigen testing, self-report any at-home rapid tests they complete, and upload their COVID-19 vaccination records. The organizations using the platform can choose from different workflows and customize the platform as they need to fit their COVID-19 response and ensure compliance with public health guidelines. The platform also gives organizational administrators access to real-time, aggregate data about their users through a central dashboard, with which they can monitor the COVID status of their organization. This allows for easy decision-making for managers and campus administrators: They are able to identify COVID hotspots in their community, and identify which individuals may not be safe to come into work or onto campus.

Thrive’s platforms offer all this, while also exceeding provincial and federal regulatory requirements, protecting individuals personal health information (in accordance with HIPAA, PIPEDA, and NIST), and offering effortless reporting pathways. The application has been endorsed by public health entities nationwide, and we’re confident that it has played a significant part in safely reopening Canada’s economy and allowing businesses to resume operations. With this platform, Alec has directly shaped Canada’s pandemic response, the safety of employees and students, and the country’s ability to re-open its economy.

BetweenMarchand June 2021 the demands on Alec and his team were significant and continuous. In every instance, Alec demonstrated admirable patience, technical leadership, and generosity of spirit. I have also seen Alec’s tremendous impact on improving and communicating around Thrive Health’s privacy and security infrastructure, which has been critical to scaled implementation of the system. In his new role as President of Thrive Health, I’ve no doubt that Alec will continue to lead and scale programs that help individuals through their care journeys.

Learn more about the Digital Health Canada Awards here.