WellHealth, Canada's Global Innovation Cluster, Lead $44 Million Consortium Funded by Digital
Vancouver-based healthcare delivery and technology development company Well Health Technologies Corp. (TSX:WELL) today secured $15.3 million in funding for a $44 million project to lead a consortium of companies developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help save doctors time.
The money comes from a Vancouver-based organization that distributes federal capital, which has changed its name from Digital Technology Supercluster and is now known as Digital: Canada's Global Innovation Cluster.
Digital is chipping away at the money through co-investments with Canadian technology companies. Since 2018, it has committed more than $200 million to companies it believes are worthy of funding. In May, Bib Digital reported that it recently provided $25.8 million to Canadian healthcare technology companies for AI-related projects.
Today's $15.3 million investment is the company's largest investment to date and is for a $44 million project dubbed Health Compass II. Digital previously invested in Well Health during the early stages of the Health Compass project.
Consortium partners alongside Well Health include Orx.ai, Healwell AI Inc. (TSX: AIDX), Tali AI, Phelix and Simon Fraser University. Representatives from these companies participated in a press conference and technology demonstration this morning alongside Federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne.
The highlight of the technology demonstration came when Well Health's medical director, Steven McDonald, had a five-minute conversation with Champagne about his recent health condition, which had left him with a sore throat and difficulty swallowing.
McDonald clicked a button on the screen, and the AI-powered technology transcribed a series of symptom questions he asked Champagne and his answers. Once the conversation was over, McDonald clicked a button on the screen, and the transcribed notes were converted into a structured summary of the conversation.
The summaries the AI spit out also included assessments of what Champagne's condition might be, even though MacDonald didn't give a diagnosis — “Likely gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)” was one of the sentences the AI spit out on the screen, for example.
“We are essentially living in a renaissance in the life sciences,” Champagne said in his speech afterward.
“Vancouver is now a global hub for life sciences and biomanufacturing, and I think that's primarily due to the talent and what we've been able to achieve with scale, the digital cluster that we have here, and artificial intelligence, and of course, the people.”
Well Health Chief Operating Officer Amir Javeedan had previously briefed Champagne on other parts of Health Compass' technology, which helps automate back-office operations for medical clinics. Javeedan also explained that apart from the technology, Well Health is also Canada's largest owner and operator of more than 175 medical clinics.
Michael Frankel, chief medical officer at Well Health and a practicing physician, praised the technology's time-saving capabilities.
“It takes a long time to write this, but it appears automatically,” he said of the technology he uses in his practice.
“That basically saves two hours per day per doctor, allowing them to spend more time with their families and see more patients.”
One of Well Health's biggest investors is Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing, who many Vancouver residents may know best as the man who ran the company that bought the city's former Expo site in 1988 for $320 million over 15 years. Bib According to reports in 2019, Yoshinari owned about 11% of the company, while his venture capital firm Horizon Ventures held 7%.
Wells founder and CEO Hamed Shahbazi is best known for founding Tio Networks, which he sold to PayPal Holdings Inc. for $304 million in 2017.
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