HHS CREATE, led by Dr. Jeremy Petch, is staffed with a team experts in AI, software engineering and data sciences, all specializing in health-care advancements. It’s a niche area of expertise that few Canadian hospitals possess, and it’s driving the growth of innovative new technologies aimed at saving, prolonging and improving lives.
Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) has a well-earned reputation as a major player in health-care technology development, with a team of experts in artificial intelligence (AI), software engineering and data sciences specializing in medical advancements. It’s a niche area of expertise that few Canadian hospitals possess, and it’s driving the growth of innovative new technologies aimed at saving, prolonging and improving lives locally, nationally and globally.
“We’re playing a unique and pioneering a role for hospitals in supporting Ontario’s innovation ecosystem, by moving innovative, groundbreaking ideas for improving human health from concept into the commercial world.” — Dr. Jeremy Petch, CREATE director
CREATE-ing new health-care technology
“Our HHS Centre for Data Science and Digital Health (CREATE) team led by Dr. Jeremy Petch is transforming the future of health care in ways not typically associated with hospitals,” says Dr. Ted Scott, HHS vice president of innovation and partnerships. “And this work is happening at a time when it’s never been more important to invest in Canadian intellectual property and strategic technology.”
As well as helping HHS doctors and staff develop and market innovative new ideas aimed at improving human health, the CREATE team lends its expertise to outside organizations, from start-ups to national and international organizations.
“CREATE’s work contributes significantly to the hospital’s clinical mission of providing the best patient care, balanced with the commercialization side of improving this care through innovation,” says Scott.
Prestigious partnerships
A point of pride for CREATE includes supporting two Toronto-based start-up companies that were then purchased by a large firm. Pentavere, and Mutuo Health Solutions were acquired within months of each other by HEALWELL AI, a large Canadian health-care AI company that’s publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
“Dr. Petch and his CREATE team were fully up to speed on how health care functions, which is an extremely valuable and rare skill set among software engineers and developers.” Dr. Noah Crampton, Mutuo CEO
Pentavere, acquired in 2023, is an AI health-care technology company, while Mutuo, acquired several months later in 2024, developed an AI scribing tool for family doctors’ offices. HEALWELL AI acquired 51 per cent of each company, leaving room for growth and value creation for both sides, with the original teams staying on to run the companies.
Pentavere CEO Aaron Leibtag (centre) credits HHS CREATE with helping his company reach the next level, including acquisition by HEALWELL AI and receiving the globally prestigious Prix Galien Award for best start-up.
Also in 2024, Pentavere received the Prix Galien Award for best digital and medical technology start-up. This globally prestigious award for life sciences innovation aimed at improving the human condition, and Pentavere is the first and only Canadian company to receive it.
The fact that two start-up companies supported by CREATE were acquired within months of each other, and one of those companies went on to receive the Prix Galien Award speaks volumes about the high quality of partnerships that CREATE attracts and supports, says Petch, CREATE’s director. Petch played a key role in connecting both start-ups with his CREATE team, and supporting their projects.
“Dr. Petch believed in us and partnered with us. I believe he’s one of the true AI luminaries in Canada.” — Aaron Leibtag, Pentavere CEO
“We’re playing a unique and pioneering a role for hospitals in supporting Ontario’s innovation ecosystem, by moving innovative, groundbreaking ideas for improving human health from concept into the commercial world,” says Petch.
Pentavere CEO Aaron Leibtag credits CREATE and Petch with helping his company reach the next level, including the acquisition and Prix Galien Award, which Leibtag accepted last November in New York City.
“Was our work with HHS CREATE a contributing factor to our acquisition? Absolutely,” says Leibtag. “We were powering one of the first and only learning health systems globally at HHS. As an AI company, being able to enable and demonstrate our AI engine with partners like HHS is what led to both our acquisition and the Prix Galien Award.”
And he credits Petch with being a key contributor to Pentavere’s journey right from the beginning. “Dr. Petch believed in us and partnered with us. I believe he’s one of the true AI luminaries in Canada.”
Turning tragedy into triumph
The idea for Pentavere’s health-care AI engine was born from personal tragedy experienced by company co-founder Steven Aviv, whose mother died from complications after undergoing surgery for a fractured ankle.
Her care team missed critical information in her medical record, buried in a clinical note. The oversight led to an inadequate dosage of a blood thinner, and she died from a brain aneurysm caused by a blood clot.
This led Aviv, who was working in the financial industry at the time, to question why his industry was routinely using AI to analyze data, while the health-care system continued to rely on multiple, unconnected electronic medical records systems, paper records and even fax machines to collect and share patient information. This unstructured, disconnected system made it difficult for doctors and health-care teams to easily access certain patient information, opening the door for missed information and mistakes. This realization sparked the creation of Pentavere.
Putting patients first
Pentavere and HHS share the common goal of pursuing health-care innovations that are patient centred. “By putting patients first you do not need to compromise on commercialization and scale,” says Leibtag.
His start-up and CREATE first worked together several years ago, when Pentavere, with its AI engine, partnered with the hospital to grow a natural language processing tool for collecting large amounts of data on HHS breast cancer patients.
The system delivers HHS breast cancer data in real time that previously would have taken months or even years to compile. Information sourced from this AI system drives quality improvements for HHS and helps doctors provide the best treatment options for their patients.
It’s a remarkably powerful system that continues to grow and absorb new patient information – from a breast cancer patient’s very first appointment at HHS’ Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre until their final appointment, or death — giving HHS doctors, leaders and researchers specific data they request almost instantly, by swiftly sorting through massive amounts of information including diagnoses, scans, tumor pathology, demographics, the social determinants of health, medications, treatments, surgeries and survivorship.
Growing an innovative idea
Mutuo CEO Dr. Noah Crampton hired HHS CREATE as an external contractor to design and develop the first version of an AI scribing tool for family doctors. Acquisition by HEALWELL AI has allowed the company to rapidly expand.
Mutuo CEO Dr. Noah Crampton was a medical resident on track to practice family medicine several years ago when a novel business idea for an AI scribing tool for family doctors inspired him to form the company.
“It wasn’t my nature to be an entrepreneur,” says Crampton. “But I had also come to realize that the future of family medicine was going to be completely transformed by the emergence of AI in health care.”
“CREATE’s work contributes significantly to the hospital’s clinical mission of providing the best patient care, balanced with the commercialization side of improving this care through innovation.” — Dr. Ted Scott, HHS vice president of innovation and partnerships
The AI scribing tool he developed in partnership with CREATE uses AI to generate medical notes from face-to-face conversations between family doctors and their patients.
Crampton hired CREATE as an external contractor to design and develop the first version this tool. “I needed it to work seamlessly with electronic medical record (EMR) workflows or family doctors wouldn’t use it,” says Crampton, who studied under Petch at the University of Toronto and felt that he, and CREATE, would be the ideal fit for developing his product.
“Dr. Petch and his CREATE team were fully up to speed on how health care functions, which is an extremely valuable and rare skill set among software engineers and developers,” says Crampton.
The teams at Mutuo and CREATE worked together for close to a year. “When we went to market, the product was in a production-ready state,” says Crampton, adding that the acquisition has allowed his business to rapidly expand.
“Through HEALWELL AI, we now have a powerhouse driving our expansion.”
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