“Responding to user needs”, “scaling up”, “proceeding by iteration”… To hear her, we could take her for a startupper. However, Kathy Malas is… speech therapist! This health professional is no less fond of innovation since her participation in a “hackathon”, a computer programming event, in 2014. “As with scientific research, we start from a problem, we test a solution and we try to perpetuate it”, says the one who won an award for her mobile application for screening children’s language problems. A passion that has become a profession: Kathy Malas has been, since 2018, director of the innovation and artificial intelligence (AI) center of the University of Montreal Hospital Center (CHUM). A position created at the same time as the CHUM’s school of artificial intelligence in health, the first of its kind in the world, to promote the emergence of innovative solutions to improve the health of the population.
Covid-19 as an accelerator
Concrete illustration of the actions already carried out: the establishment (half a million patients per year) set up, in January 2021, an automatic text message system to inform the relatives of a person undergoing surgery of the progress of the operation.
Six months later, the CHUM, quoted by the American magazine Newsweek in its list of the most innovative hospitals in the world, launched a platform to facilitate appointment booking in oncology, thanks to algorithms. “Previously, secretaries had to take into account around forty constraints. This solution saved them two hours of work a day,” explains Kathy Malas. Faced with the challenges of resources and endless waiting times, the public health system is increasingly seeking its salvation in innovation. Especially since the pandemic, which has accelerated the digitization of services. “It’s a way to find a good compromise between better service and lower cost,” said Didier Leconte, vice-president of life sciences and technology at Investissement Québec.
The most obvious illustration? The phenomenal rise of telemedicine over the past two years. In Ontario, between 2019 and 2020, the number of doctor visits fell by 80%, while online consultations jumped by 5600%, according to an independent research firm. In the process, a study by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), the organization representing the profession, indicated that only six out of ten Canadians preferred physical contact with a doctor in the future compared to 20% by telephone and 14 % in videoconference. “Telemedicine has gained ten years in terms of market penetration thanks to the pandemic”, summarizes Didier Leconte.
“In Quebec, you have to wait 599 days to obtain the equivalent of a attending physician, continues Adrien Gaudon, who works for Dialogue, one of these online care platforms. Our service helps Canadians to have better access to healthcare. This Toulousain, a former web developer, arrived in 2012, has been responsible for digital products for the Montreal start-up for three years. Created in 2016, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, it has more than 1,000 employees, 80% of whom are in medical positions. “Doctors or nurses have become managers of a technology company, roles they could never have had in the public,” he continues.
A growing ecosystem
The customers of these telemedicine services are above all companies wishing to improve the social benefits of their employees. Doesn’t this system then risk consolidating a two-speed medicine in the country? “The philosophy must remain universal equity for access to health services, regardless of place of residence or social class,” responds Dr. Abdo Shabah, emergency physician and member of the CMA board of directors. “Private and tech act as a locomotive that pulls the innovations of the entire system”, specifies Adrien Gaudon.
According to PwC, spending on digital health is expected to more than double by 2030. Something to give many entrepreneurs ideas. “Health is the sector where there is the greatest potential for technological transformation over the next five years, says Dr. Shabah. The pandemic has exposed the fault lines of the network and the landscape has completely transformed with the gradual arrival of digital giants. The former director of Google in Montreal, Marie-Josée Lamothe, now academic director of the Dobson Center for Entrepreneurship at McGill University, confirms this revolution. Last October, it opened a program dedicated to health start-ups.
Canada already has some great successes in this area. In Toronto, epidemiologists and computer engineers from BlueDot, an AI-based company that detects infectious diseases and anticipates their spread around the world, were the first to detect the outbreak of a new coronavirus in China on December 31. 2019, ten days before the World Health Organization publicly mentions the one who will cause the Covid-19 pandemic. The Montreal start-up Paperplane Therapeutics has designed therapeutic games in virtual reality, used in particular during the vaccination campaign for 5 to 11 year olds.
Also noteworthy, in a more industrial register, is the construction in Montreal of the new messenger RNA vaccine manufacturing plant for the Moderna laboratory, which should produce no less than 100 million doses per year. Didier Leconte is delighted: “With our talents and our renowned researchers from one end of the country to the other, Canada is effectively demonstrating its historical expertise in biotechnology.”