Matt McCoy 0:00

Welcome to the Give Back Health Podcast, where we explore how innovation, philanthropy, and bold leadership are shaping the future of healthcare right here in Canada. This podcast is brought to you by the Give Back Health Innovation Foundation. And this show spotlights the people and ideas that are turning research into real-world impact. I'm Matt McCoy. Today we're joined by Dr. Dante Mora, the founder of the CAN Health Network. And we're here to discuss innovation that's changing healthcare in Canada. Let's jump in. Canada is home to world-class research and innovation, yet many Canadian health technologies struggle to scale within our current healthcare system. Why does this gap exist and what impact does it have on patients and the broader health ecosystem?

Dante Morra 0:49

So, Matt, this is something that I've dedicated the next phase of my life to because I think it's one of the single most important things that are happening within the country. So traditionally, most of the research and innovation dollars by government and others has been focused on basic research and the early discovery. And culturally, as a country, we have had incredible discoveries, whether that's GLP1s with Ozempic or AI. So Canada has been this incredible leader. But culturally, we haven't celebrated that commercialization and we haven't put the machinery in place to be able to do that. And so what we've been doing at Can Health is actually helping to create that adoption. So when a company does scale, you can actually get it adopted within the Canadian landscape. It's really a critical thing because if we have a great technology and it becomes an American or another, another technology, we lose the tax base or the prosperity part of it. And fundamentally across Canada, healthcare, innovation, science, that's where you drive your innovation economy. That's where you create your new jobs. That's where you create your tax base for the universality of healthcare. But it's actually beyond that as well. It's when you design your innovations for your population. That's when you actually improve the health of your population. And that's when you make the system function better. So there's multiple reasons for this, everything from culturally, everything from not having the systems to be able to scale companies, everything to having always funded the discovery side of the equation and not putting this translational apparatus in place. And also not always rewarding people for taking that risk and encouraging them to take that risk and setting up the mechanisms that extend from spin out to early adoption to scale to capital to scaling in the rest of the world. So we spent a lot of our time thinking about how do you industrialize this to be able to turn Canada into the place where you can lead the new healthcare economy, lead the new economy? Totally possible because we figured out a big part of that. And that is the early research and innovation aspect of the equation.

Matt McCoy 2:56

From your perspective, leading the Can Health Network, what is the biggest structural opportunity to improve how Canada adapts and scales health innovation?

Dante Morra 3:05

So the way that Can Health is focused on this part of the problem, because it's an amazing opportunity, is we've worked on the adoption side. So how do we get health systems, and that can be everyone from Alberta Health Services or a hospital like Mount Sinai Hospital or Sunnybrook to long-term care or primary care, to labs, to pharmacy. We've been focusing on how you take a company that is formed and is procured and scaled across the country because most people have focused on let's create more companies or let's create more business plans. If you can create those, but you then can't adopt them and scale them and get them customers, then there's actually very little value in that part of the value chain. So we spent the majority of time on this adoption. And I think we're succeeding, but there's more to come over time. I think culturally and the opportunity now is the ability to spin out. So when I look at health systems, the question I look at is how many companies have you spun out in the last years? Because they have so much IP and skill and talent inside, but it's the ability to take that, put it into a company, bring professional management and capital in to but then be able to scale across our network. So the adoption side is still something. There's the opportunity for us to have more ambition and scale things into the world. That is happening. Now I believe the single best important thing is the ability for organizations to spin out, for us to create companies that have professional management and well capitalized and to have the leadership to be able to scale these companies quickly because things are moving so fast right now.

Matt McCoy 4:38

You have visibility into the health innovation happening across the country. What are the most exciting breakthroughs or trends you're seeing that give you optimism about the future of Canadian healthcare?

Dante Morra 4:49

So actually, I am the most excited I've ever been about the opportunity. And the reality is healthcare is the biggest market in the developed world. So in the US, it's 20% of GDP. So you have to take the defense industry, energy, and then you double it to get to that. So it is by far the biggest industry. It's 12% in Canada, and it's the future industry. So everything else gets commoditized over time. Health is the big one. Healthcare is undergoing its blockbuster video moment or its Kodak moment, whatever you want to see. And so there's two things that I'm super excited about. One is the ability for technology to change the dynamic of quality access and sustainability. So when you're running a big organization, you have to either drive quality, drive throughput or access, or have financial constraints. There's technology in place right now that is changing those dynamics, which allows us to provide care to people better, faster, and cheaper. An example of that is Virtual Hallway, Nova Scotia-based company. They've changed the dynamics of the environment to improve throughput and access to specialists, which everybody likes with less cost. Super exciting. The second thing is the movement towards prevention. Healthcare is such an interesting industry because we're functioning in sort of like 20 years behind. The way that we are is you're driving a car and your wheel just falls off, and then you go to the hospital. But when you drive a car now, you actually get a little thing on your on your icon that says your wheel's a problem, go fix it. And even before that, you get a checkout to make sure your tires treads are right. Healthcare is an information business, and it's going where the majority of the thinking is going as to how do I prevent your illness? How do I detect your heart attack before it's going to happen? And how do I put in place the things to make you healthier to prevent those illnesses from happening or to manage them before they become intensified? That technology is all here. AI is beautiful for this space. Finally, there's the ability to do everything at home. We're about to go through the Amazon Facation of healthcare, where all of your care can be done at home. We're already send prescriptions to your home. You can do virtual care. We can take blood work in your home. You can have AI looking at that. We have ultrasound that you can now do physical exam at home. So this concept of having it be able to go everywhere is so exciting because if you look at northern Canada, the life quality and quantity and standards are not good. And that's partly because of access, of the distance. And so there's all these fundamental constraints that have held us back that are breaking with technology, which is super exciting. And now we just need to make sure Canada is going to lead that. And that's what we're doing with Can Health and the work that the larger system that we're working on is doing.

Matt McCoy 7:39

That brings me into the next question. Why is it important that Canadian innovations are developed and scaled here in Canada first rather than leaving the country to grow elsewhere?

Dante Morra 7:49

So this is the entire future of the industrial policy. So if you if you have GLP1s invented in in Toronto and then they end up uh um being part a big part of the GDP of a foreign company because they took the IP and the opportunity, what you're doing is you're missing the opportunity to drive economic growth. The the future of healthcare is technology companies that will be delivering care to the to the population. If those companies aren't in Canada with Canadian employees paying Canadian taxes, supporting Canadian infrastructure, there's no tax base to provide for universal care. So it's actually existential. It's the largest market. And if we don't actually have the supply chain and the technology to be able to do that, then we actually don't have the tax revenue to pay for health care. Second, it allows us to change the way that healthcare is being done with Canadian values and Canadian trust. So when you have Canadian companies leading the way, the way that they do things and the way that they deliver care and the way that they set the table is globally more responsible in a more trusted way. So there's the ability to provide better care, there's the ability to actually have prosperity in an industrial complex, and this ability to be done in such a way that it actually is part of our values as a country and allows Canada to lead the conversation on how it's done.

Matt McCoy 9:09

Can Health Network has built a model that connects Canadian innovators with healthcare systems to validate and scale their solutions. How has the approach changed the landscape for Canadian med tech companies specifically?

Dante Morra 9:22

Yeah, so I'm not declaring success and we have a we have a huge amount of work to still do. But when we started Can Health and I was working with the federal government, they said, if you can get one hospital, just one hospital to buy one Canadian technology, you'll have succeeded where nobody has. And I said, well, no, we're gonna, with our team, we're gonna have the whole country together. We're gonna create a procurement network of 200 billion, we're gonna have 50 organizations that are family medicine to long-term care from Vancouver to St. John to Quebec to the north. And everyone was like, that's ridiculous. That's never gonna happen. So what we've actually been able to do is create a $200 billion procurement network, 50 organizations. We've scaled 100 companies, we've done provincial procurements for the first time. We've been able to show health outcomes. There's billion-dollar companies, multiple hundred million dollar companies, 50 million, 20 million, 10 million. There's hundreds of companies now that have been adopted. And they are the protagonists. So they're the heroes in the stock in the story. We just set up on the podium where athletes can fairly compete and win. And then Canadian technology is amazing. We have great innovators. When you set the table for them to have a good competition and a way in, they do amazing things. So now what we're talking about with can health, and again, we haven't completely solved it, but we've actually completely changed the model. Now we're talking about how are we taking those hundred companies that have good adoption to the rest of the world? That conversation would have been impossible 10 years ago because there was no companies. And so now these companies are coaching other companies. So there's companies that are at a billion that are 12 quarters ahead of the 500 million, the 500 million or 12 quarters ahead of the 100 million. Their talent flows through it, capital starting to come in. So the next key part of it is taking, doing more. So I want to, we have 700 companies in our database. We have 250 companies ready to go through the network, doing more, bigger, faster, more scale, less friction on scale, more exports now, more sophisticated capital coming in, the speed of these companies accelerating. But it's, I believe we've had a significant impact on the ecosystem.

Matt McCoy 11:36

What excited you about partnering with GiveBack? And how do you see the philanthropic capital playing a role in accelerating healthcare innovation in Canada?

Dante Morra 11:45

I'm super excited about GiveBack. One, there's amazing leaders who are doing it, who are technologists and leaders and great Canadians. So often when we're partnering, we look at the who. That's an important part. The second part is in Canada, there is not enough capital coming at this industrial ecosystem. And we need capital at different at different places. We need people writing $100 million checks, $50 million checks, $20 million, $10 million, $5 million, $1 million. So there's not enough. And that capital, it doesn't have the sophistication and history of being able to scale companies. So there's some, but not nearly anywhere close to the size of the market and the size of the opportunity. Give back is a way of mobilizing philanthropic capital, which there's a lot in a way that helps healthcare in the most important way. So as a leader of a hospital, I've had the pleasure of working and changing healthcare from the inside. I've received important donations for everything from building hospitals to creating research programs. That is really important. That doesn't mean that has to stop. But the true driver of the future of healthcare that's going to change everything because we're in this blockbuster moment is this industrial technology biologic ecosystem which is forming. The money to get those spun out, which I was talking about, give back is perfect for that. Because that capital has to come at a high risk. It has to have a social impact to it, and it has to help build this ecosystem. And they have created a vehicle to create that capital to then change healthcare in a different way. And that's everything from a researcher who's got something that's great that makes it commercially minded to spinning something out, which I can't keep saying how important that is for organizations to build that muscle, to early capital on the cap table. That's high risk. I think this space is one of the most important capital spaces of which there's a deficit. And it shouldn't be grants from government. It needs to be donor-directed strategic capital with a commercial drive. And then that then creates an amazing ecosystem for the next bit of capital, which can also function early there, but then takes this ecosystem into scaling companies. So we have amazing talent. This capital, which is strategic philanthropic capital, allows us to go there and it can work extremely well for our donors. And it creates an alternative and a powerful vehicle to change Canada, drive prosperity, and improve healthcare. So I'm super excited about what GiveBack's doing.

Matt McCoy 14:24

For donors who want to create meaningful impact, how can initiatives like GiveBack help ensure their support actually leads to real advancements in patient care?

Dante Morra 14:34

So I've been at I've been many parts of the value chain, from an academic physician publishing papers to a system leader running organizations to being in the commercial ecosystem to being an entrepreneur. So I've seen the I've seen the ecosystem. So when I'm publishing papers and creating discovery, it's knowledge. It doesn't help patients. So the ability to liberate those ideas, those technologies, those innovations into the chain to become companies, which it's actually how you do it, is what's missing. And give back and fill it gives the opportunity for philanthropists to say, look, here's the thing. I care about hospitals and bricks and mortar. I care about programs and research. But I actually also care about having something go to impact and scale through companies and capitalism and social capitalism that can scale across 20, 40 million people, a million people, 100,000. Because the reality is technology doesn't do that well through government and it doesn't do it well through research. So you need this vehicle to liberate and to accelerate it. And so that's where patient in impact happens. You can conceive of the device, but it's when you get the device to 100,000 diabetics that you change people's lives and their outcomes and the cost of healthcare. That middleware is where now you can put philanthropic capital into that place, which is super exciting.

Matt McCoy 16:06

How does supporting Canadian health innovation today translate into better outcomes for patients and communities across the country?

Dante Morra 16:14

So fundamentally, the thing that improves healthcare is in innovation. So whether that's a pacemaker that goes into your into your chest where people would have died, whether that's a drug that you would have passed away like a year ago with cancer or something else, whether it's a vaccine, whether that's technology that improves the delivery of systems. The only way we improve the mechanisms of delivery and disease and suffering is through the adoption and scale of technology and the business models that are appropriate to it. So the give back and the work that is happening allows that to accelerate. And that can be everything from virtual hallway, which is doing it at a systems level, or a company like Point Click Care, which is changing the operating dynamics, and there's many of those, to devices and products like nano tasks out of Calgary, which improves wound healing and chronic wounds, which is misery, suffering, and a $10 billion problem for Canada. But those things only happen once they exit the research environment and become products that can be shipped, scaled, and supported across the country. And then that tax base is what funds the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals to be able to provide care. So that virtuous circle of scaling research out, turning into companies, changing health outcomes, driving tax revenue, which then gets reinvested into the care of individuals and around and around, is actually the future of how it works. We just haven't purposefully driven that wheel, and there's parts of it that has been in the way. The second point is what's so exciting right now is there are problems that have had constraints that were unsolvable, which are now totally solvable. It is completely possible to provide primary care to 40 million Canadians through an IT platform with AI and provide the best preventive care. That is technologically not hard to do. That was impossible. It is completely possible to ship blood, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics right around the country. That is possible through both everything from telecommunication to how things get ships to drones to technology. This is incredible. This is so exciting. There are people who sit in Toronto and do surgery in another country. So all these things are converging. So we're I keep saying we're at this blockbuster video moment where the entire way that content and healthcare is being delivered is going to be disrupted and is being disrupted. And that can be 100% for the benefit of the patient and the benefit of the health system and the benefit of the country and the benefit of the world.

Matt McCoy 18:54

If you could share one message with Canadians about the role they can play in strengthening our healthcare future, what would it be?

Dante Morra 19:01

So I would say keep giving. So philanthropy is an important part of the ecosystem of healthcare. But give to something that has a different energy of transformation. So think about that check going to the entrepreneur who is coming up with the idea, which is going to change the prosperity of the country and the healthcare system. Because I believe that is where the energy is going to come that is going to transform healthcare. That's not taking anything away from the great work that is being done. There's work that is happening there as well. But there is a new opportunity where you can write a check, donate, and drive the industrial opportunity within healthcare, which is how you change the delivery of it. That I believe is the single best dollar invested in the Canadian ecosystem.

Matt McCoy 19:52

This one we didn't have planned, but uh optional if you want to answer it. I'm curious if you could go back to your 18-year-old self or any young future, you know, builders and leaders in healthcare and beyond that. What is one piece of advice you would give to your 18-year-old self or an 18-year-old today?

Dante Morra 20:10

For me, as my 18-year-old self, I was I was sort of between this two loves. One of them was medicine and the other one was business. And I felt that I had to choose one. And my first love was medicine. Like my first like my life's purpose is to drive health. And I use different tools to do that. What I what I thought when I was making the decision to go into health was that I couldn't have those two loves. I couldn't, I couldn't have both of those things together. But I'm super excited because I get to, I get to be a physician and drive health, but use different tools. Those tools can be stethoscope or an ultrasound or a pen for a prescription, a computer, a hospital system, leading a hospital system, helping innovation, being an entrepreneur. So I think I think I'd sort of say that to the 18-year-olds who are coming in is health is the most important and the largest industry in the developed world. And by the way, it's not going to get smaller. As things get commoditized, health is the most important thing. Education, the things that actually create awareness, human development, that's where we're going. And so there's no other industry that is as exciting as healthcare right now because the business models and the disruption that's happening, and it can look chaotic, but the reality is that the future is incredibly bright. And all the things that people have been struggling with from delivery to healthcare to prevention, we are in the process of using technology. And that's everything from biotechnology and tissue to AI to robotics to solve those problems, which takes away suffering. And I don't think there's anything more rewarding than being in that space and using all the different complexities from business models to Adoption, to regulation, to technology, to the human conditions to be able to make the world a better place. So I would say put your energy into healthcare and come at it from a disruptive mindset of how can we make it better by using different means to do that.

Matt McCoy 22:15

Awesome. Thanks for coming on, Dante. Thanks for tuning in to the Give Back Health podcast. If you believe Canada's best health innovations deserve to reach the people who need them, follow and share this episode. To learn more about the Give Back Health Innovation Foundation, visit GiveBack Health online. We'll see you next time.