Healthcare in Motion: Agency, Innovation & Capacity for Change

I mean, whether they're related or not, it's just synergy.

Like, for me, just to put a little bit of color to it, I- you might ask yourself, why is an intensivist talking about preventative health, preventative c- care? Why would you when your expertise is in when somebody's life is in your hands, and they're about to die, and you need to intervene? What it came down to is when you saw what patients went through when they landed in an intensive care unit, when you look at the suffering they have as a patient, w- whether it's physical suffering, the mental health aspects.

We see a lot of PTSD, mental health, um, [lips smack] uh, depression, anxiety.

We, we see them a shell of what they were before coming in.

About, uh, about 15 to 20% of our patients don't survive.

The impact I've seen, we see it have on their families, and then the financial impact it has on society.

Like, one, as an example, one, uh, admission to an ICU could range from anywhere from 25 to $75,000 per admission.

So when you look at that, the entirety of what it means to land in an ICU, what if we focus on n- not landing there in the first place? And that was a big aha moment for me.

We talked earlier about, about how, about how my, our area of research was on, on cost.

Well, if you put- don't land in ICU, that's a ton of sa- cost savings.

So that's where the prevention pivot came to me.

And then when it comes to innovation, it's how do you... essentially just as inno-, uh, creative ways of reaching more people.

And so that might be leveraging AI.

It might be leveraging tech.

It might be leveraging, um, uh, just these smart companies that are, that are taking away barriers for us to make better choices.

And so to me, it's, it's an, it's an amazing marriage and, and, and thinking about ways how we could reach more Canadians and not only inform them about ways to do it but also nudge them.

How do we nudge them in the way to, to say, like, "Let's not make this hard.

Let's make it as easy as possible," and nudge them in the, well, I like, you know, 80/20 factor.

What's the best nudge that's gonna give you the biggest impact? And I must say, in my career, so the negative side is I, I haven't seen our healthcare system struggling as bad as it is now.

But then I've also never seen people wanting to have more agency in their health like I have now.

So to me, when you look at where we're at with health tech and, and innovation, and you look at the drive for agency right now, there's an opportunity knocking, and we gotta, we gotta open that door.

That's a great comment on, like, what's becoming possible now that, that wasn't kind of before, and it's that ability to scale, like, your reach, uh, and to help people to understand things quicker, um, and to take action on some of those things.

Is that what you're saying?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Like it, like, I mean, I just think and, uh, this might be controversial to say, but in the healthcare space, medical space, we, we're, we gotta realize our traditional ways of reaching people hasn't been always effective.