Validating Healthtech with Health Cities
Hi friends! Welcome to the blog recap of our Entrepreneur Education Series. Today, we’re sitting down with Reg Joseph from Health Cities to chat about the state of healthcare tech in Alberta, the different paths to validation, and what Health Cities is up to.
Let’s do some quick intros. Reg was appointed as the CEO of Health Cities in February 2018, and since then, has focused on developing new pathways for healthcare delivery to drive better health outcomes and economic growth for our region.
Reg has 20 years’ experience spanning the health, technology and investment sectors, and has served in a wide variety of roles including as an analyst with Leerink Swann & Co., manager of the global business unit at Invitrogen Corporation (now Thermo Fisher), and Vice President of Health at Alberta Innovates, managing outgoing investments from the Heritage Fund.
And what exactly is Health Cities? Health Cities is a Canadian not-for-profit corporation that works with clinicians, innovators, philanthropic organizations, and companies to develop new models of care to drive better health outcomes and economic growth in the health sector.
Let’s get into the recap now!
Zack: And we’re live! Hi Reg.
Reg: Hey Zack.
Zack: So we’re done a quick intro for yourself and for Health Cities, so let’s dive in and talk about the 2 major projects that Health Cities has on the go - Digital Health Integration Readiness Platform and Remote Monitoring (HHM).
Reg: Yeah, for sure! So both projects have kinda evolved from some of the pet peeves that I have with the healthcare system in Alberta.
Currently, it requires 5 years and $5M (or more!) to integrate with the Electronic Medical Records system, and honestly, I think that’s just way too much time and way too much money. Thus the Digital Health Integration Readiness Platform idea was born.
The Digital Health Integration Readiness Platform (Pre-HaTCH) is a joint initiative between Health Cities and Brightsquid, and was developed to provide SMEs with the training and education required to address challenges related to privacy, security, regulatory, and integration activities. The program is all about addressing the existing gaps in the system, and to provide SMEs with the fundamental understanding of technical readiness, to prep them to tackle the complex integration requirements.
The program is designed to:
Help early-stage companies understand the health information regulatory requirements for their product to commercialize
Provide basic knowledge for software development practices to incorporate privacy and security principles to be successful in the health sector
Provide a clear overview of Canada’s healthcare delivery and health tech ecosystems
Provide resource options at the conclusion of the course to clarify the road to market and commercialization
Zack: Very very cool. And the second program?
Reg: The second program is a remote monitoring project. Residents in central Alberta are enrolled in the project, which uses technology to support health care management and to explore alternative care delivery models. This initiative, called the Alberta Central Zone PCN Home Health Monitoring (HHM) Project, uses teams of Primary Care Network (PCN) nurses and physicians to monitor care for patients with chronic health conditions from home, minimizing their risk of exposure to COVID-19 AND easing stress on the health system. It’s a great collaboration between ourselves, the Government of Alberta, Alberta Health Services (AHS), Alberta Central Zone Primary Care Networks (PCNs), Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd., TELUS Health, and Alberta Innovates.
Zack: Wow, both sound like such great initiatives. And you mentioned they came about because of some of your pet peeves with our healthcare system?
Reg: Yes, with the issues I have with the structure of procurement we have in our healthcare system, in particular.
In the past, as Albertans, we would have some frustrations with our healthcare industry, and the use of antiquated systems and things like fax machines - but where we were actually touching the system and receiving care, that was still good, and we would put up with the other issues.
But now, our performance is declining. For example, in this study I just read about healthcare systems in G11 countries, we have fallen to #10. The innovation gap for operations and tech in our system is huge, and we need to turn it around.
For example, Alberta Health Services (AHS) - it is the largest health authority in Canada. And they tend to buy from large multinationals and established companies. They ask you to provide data from other districts, outside of Alberta, as proof of your systems/tech, and that can be very taxing on an Albertan startup.
When I was the CEO of Metabolomic Technologies Inc, we had an early screening test for colon cancer that we could not get validated in Canada. We ended up going outside of Canada, and had it validated in the US, and it’s now in the market there. We just didn’t and don’t have the systems in Alberta to validate healthcare. You can’t do all the steps you need to do to grow and scale your company - we have pockets of expertise in each level, but since those pockets are linked up, there’s no easy path to complete clinical trials, generate data, etc.
At Health Cities, that’s my goal. I want to build a value chain to help find clinics, vendors, and companies that can partner together to gather data, run trials, and validate the tech. I want to create the pathways Alberta startups need to test and develop in our province, vs moving to other countries.
Zack: A great example of that is the local success story, MEDO AI, which Health Cities worked with.
Reg: 100%. MEDO was born from the idea to combine portable ultrasounds with AI, and allow users to look within the body and make important diagnoses accurately and reliably.
After feedback from practitioners, one of the issues they were facing in Indigenous communities was that it was harder to get them to come back or travel in order to get ultrasounds to diagnose hip osteoarthritis. With MEDO, we have the capability to take this tech into the field, into the communities, and overcome the travel barriers. Anyone can be trained to use the machine, and then the images are uploaded to radiologists, who can diagnose from their offices without having to see the patient in person.
We also had tremendous support from the radiologists, who helped figure out what the backend integration had to be, to work with the AHS system.
These partnerships, the people who fought to get this in place - this is the system I want to design. You listen to feedback, find pain points, develop tech, and then use the community capacity to do trials and gather data, and then a local company gets the win and can scale globally. I want this system in place, so that it’s a lot easier, and repeatable.
Zack: That would be so great. It would be so exciting to see more local success stories, Albertan companies on the global stage. Can you speak more to regulatory pathways for healthtech?
Reg: Yes, for sure. So the most onerous regulatory pathways are for pharmaceuticals - that’s where you get into multi-year clinical trials, millions spent, etc. That’s where someone like Andrew MacIsaac and his team at API can help.
With other tech, especially anything that is relatively non-invasive and where potential harm to the patient is minimized - the amount of regulatory hurdles are reduced.
I highly suggest working with a regulatory consultant. Walk them through how your solution is going to be used in a clinic setting, and they can do an assessment to tell you what regulatory pathway you need to take. Once you have that assessment, you can talk directly with Health Canada, who will outline all the steps you need to take.
Zack: Great advice. And I’m sure, if any of you in our audience are looking for recommendations on regulatory consultants, you can connect with Reg or his team, and they can point you in the right direction.
Reg, this was a great conversation. Thanks so much for your time, and looking forward to hearing more about the digital integration platform and remote monitoring project.
Reg: Thanks Zack!