Good afternoon, Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the introduction.
My name is Steve Denniss. I've been invited here today to this committee to offer my view on the sub-topic of training health professionals as it pertains to technological innovation in health care in Canada. I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to participate. I am here today to present to you my view as an individual.
As a matter of context, I will take a minute to briefly give you my background and experience as it relates to health, technology, and innovation. I have a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship-funded master of science focused on human pathophysiology and disease, and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council-funded doctorate of philosophy focused on integrative biology and mechanisms of disease, for which I received a Governor General’s gold medal.
Motivated by a growing interest and passion for health innovation and entrepreneurship, during the latter years of my doctoral program I began to independently seek out and take advantage of barrier-free opportunities to engage in government-sponsored business and entrepreneurship education and developmental programs, among which include the MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 program, the Ontario Centres of Excellence Value Added Personnel program, and the Mitacs Step program.
In further pursuit of a growing interest in health innovation, entrepreneurship, and business, I have spent the past year employed as a post-doctoral associate at the International Centre for Health Innovation. Within this role I have gained experience working to drive the success of innovation adoption research projects requiring the engagement and management of industry-academic-health care partners and interdisciplinary teams, as well as teaching aspiring health and business professionals. Currently, I am pursuing opportunities in the health and wellness and health-care consulting space. I am taking advantage of barrier-free business and entrepreneurship development and services, including science and technology business start-up competitions.
From my view, with respect to training health professionals as it pertains to technological innovation, I have the following key message that I would like to convey to the federal government through this committee: keep doing what you’re doing in funding barrier-free entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives, consider making a few adjustments to promote their widespread success, and be patient.
First, in support of the message to keep on doing what you're doing in funding barrier-free entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives, I offer the following viewpoint and recommendations to consider.
If one thing is certain, the need for innovation and those who can deliver it is upon us. In the health and health care sector of the economy, this is especially certain. From the overwhelming health demands of the aging and chronically ill populations and an ever-increasing exposure to competitive global marketplaces, these needs are real.
While Canada has got better and better at scientific and technological discovery, it has not made the same progress in becoming better and better at innovation, which may reflect that Canada has got very good at generating a highly educated and highly skilled workforce, but has not made the same progress in generating a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce that is also highly innovative.
As for the demand for and the desire of such trainees to pursue more innovative careers outside a classic corporate academic role, for example, I think it's there. A case in point for supporting this view is the biomedical scientist workforce. I would point to the findings of a recent National Institutes of Health study, which found that only 23% of Ph.D.-trained biomedical scientists were in tenure or tenure-track academic positions and that as many as 49% were engaged in industrial research, science-related non-research, and non-science-related employment.
While unable to find comparable Canadian statistics, I am confident that, if measured, they would be at least similar. With this view, it is encouraging to see a growing number of government-funded scholarship programs to help financially support trainees, fellows, and practitioners who wish to engage in industry or industry-academic research initiatives, and who are able to find such opportunities that are a good fit for both the company and for them. However, with a limited number of such companies in Canada in need of a specific set of scientific or technical/technological knowledge, skills, and experience, this option is quite limited at this time.
Also encouraging, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research offers a science-to-business scholarship program, which provides partial financial support to Ph.D.-trained scientists in a health or health care-related field to pursue an M.B.A. This is indeed a great opportunity for those who wish to gain and apply such breadth and depth of business skills and experience. However, these scholarships are few in number and this path has a number of significant barriers, including additional financial costs, opportunity costs, and the risk of those who complete an M.B.A. program deciding to leave the health and health care field.
In addition, if the passion and ambition of a health scientist or practitioner, at least in the early stages, is simply to find a successful means by which to translate their great idea into an innovative solution worth implementing, a full-blown M.B.A. program may not be the best fit for such individuals, as one does not necessarily need an M.B.A. to become an entrepreneur or to begin innovating successfully.
For the increasing number of aspiring and seasoned health and health care professionals seeking to gain innovation skills and experiences that meet their needs, I believe that financially supporting entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives such as local innovation hubs, incubators, and competitions so they can be barrier-free is a worthwhile allocation of government funds in supporting the training of health professionals to facilitate technological innovation in the Canadian health care sector.
Second, in support of the message to make a few adjustments to promote widespread success, I offer the following viewpoint and recommendations to consider.
There is still a majority of potentially interested, willing and able, aspiring and seasoned health and health care professionals who are unaware of government-funded, barrier-free entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives available to them. The adjustments I would suggest that the government consider to help promote the widespread success of such funded entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives include the awareness of available resources, and adjunct support for local competitions.
Regarding the awareness of available resources, while it is a great and necessary step to have in existence a growing number of local, barrier-free entrepreneurship and innovation resources that aspiring and seasoned health and health care professionals can engage in, a key factor in realizing the full potential of those initiatives lies in how aware and informed those individuals are of such initiatives.
Without the conception and rollout of an elaborate and expensive campaign, I believe there are a number of relatively straightforward and low- or no-cost steps that could be taken to promote awareness of such resources using existing channels and supports within institutions.
For example, each department head of a university or a health care facility could send out an approved email to their staff with information on such barrier-free supports, services, and competitions available within their institution and/or the surrounding community to be passed along to health students or front-line staff. If there happens to be an innovation champion within the department with industry-academic, and/or entrepreneurship experience, have that individual as a consulting resource and/or a provider of a department seminar to even further contextualize such initiatives.
Regarding adjunct support for competitions, there is a growing trend for institutions or local innovation hubs to put on government-sponsored competitions in hopes of attracting health science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students and/or working professionals with the next big discovery or idea.
However, beyond a set of requirements and an application form with a list of business plan-related questions to answer, there is rarely an offering of adjunct support to help educate these non-business trained individuals on the right set of business fundamentals and frameworks upon which to build a great idea into an innovative solution worth implementing.
Such adjunct support for competitions would serve the important purpose of helping to prevent false hope and setting competition entrants up for failure, and of not wasting the precious time, energy, and resources of both the participants and the evaluators. The latter are typically individuals in key academic, clinical, and business positions.
Again, without the conception and rollout of an elaborate, expensive, and localized educational seminar series that reinvents the wheel for every competition, I believe there is a relatively straightforward and low- or no-cost step that could be taken to offer such adjunct support services using existing channels.
For example, Toronto-based MaRS runs a free Entrepreneurship 101 course taught by credible and seasoned individuals in entrepreneurship, who teach participants the necessary and sufficient business fundamentals and frameworks needed to evaluate the potential of any next great idea. Because each session is offered and archived as a webcast, this resource could be used as an adjunct support by anyone putting on a competition.
Lastly, in support of the message to “be patient”, I offer the following viewpoint and recommendations to consider. It takes time to change a culture. This is especially true in situations where things are polarized into specializations and heavily set in traditions and practices such as they are in both health care and education. It’s said that even if you’re doing everything right, it can still take up to seven years to successfully change a culture of an organization or a society. So if at all possible, this should be borne in mind when the government evaluates its metrics of the chosen measures of success of its entrepreneurship and innovation funding initiatives to decide whether to persist or to pivot.
With those elaborations, I will end by restating my key message: “Keep doing what you’re doing in funding barrier-free entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives, consider making a few adjustments to promote widespread success, and be patient.”
Thank you.