How AI changes Canadian healthcare with exited founder Frank Baylis

Gloria Baylis started Baylis Medical in 1983. When her son Frank graduated from university in 1986 year, he wanted to join her at the firm. 

She said no. She wanted him to work somewhere else first. So that’s what Frank did.

Three years later, he returned to partner with Gloria and Kris Shah, and over the next couple of decades, they built Baylis Medical into one of the leading medical device suppliers in the world.

Today, Frank Baylis is one of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs and a former Member of Parliament. He has co-founded and exited several companies, including multiple medical device product lines from Baylis Medical and a SR&ED consulting firm.

His most recent exit was to Boston Scientific for $1.75 billion USD. We joined him at his office in Montreal to learn about his companies, the future of AI for healthcare, and his time in politics.

This is what we learned. If you want to watch or listen to the full version, you can find it on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

AI for Healthcare

Canada’s universal healthcare system is a cornerstone of our national identity. But it isn’t easy to see a doctor. Wait times are high, the system is overloaded, and 20% of Canadians don’t have a family doctor.

Frank argues that AI in healthcare could change that.

AI could take load off of the system by  enabling overworked doctors and support staff to spend more time with patients. 

This would change the math for patient care. If you can reduce cost and administrative time per patient by leveraging AI, doctors and support staff should be able see more patients in total. 

Just like every industry, there are narrow use cases that would allow AI models to support experts in their diagnosis and improve the experience for the end user. This is an exciting opportunity to make one of Canada’s most important systems better. Its success will be determined by the accessibility of data.

Frank also mentioned government services like the CRA as a key pillar of AI adoption. Since recording this, Canada has launched Digital Transformation Canada to modernize and streamline federal services. Every province and municipality should follow suit.

Canadian health data

Today, Canadians’ health data is fragmented. No more, Frank illustrates, are the days where your doctor will write directly into a file that’s stored in your doctor’s office. It’s stored in the cloud.

If you want to get care with full context from a specialist, a new doctor, or an ER in a different province, your health records must be pulled. In each of these scenarios, accessing your health records is increasingly more challenging.

Frank envisions a world where Canadians have a unified layer of data that spans across the country, allowing patients to receive care from healthcare providers with full context into their medical history.

Because Canada is so diverse, and offers universal healthcare, unifying health records would create one of the most valuable healthcare data sets in the world, once identifiers were removed. Frank argues that we could use this to build an industry that leads AI for healthcare.

At the moment, accessing medical records in the cloud results in data routed through American data centres. And because of the CLOUD Act, this data could be requested by the U.S. government at any time. This is not sovereignty over our health data.

For Frank, building data sovereignty is just as pressing an issue as building AI sovereignty. This is a compelling argument for new data centres that are developed and operated by Canadian companies. 

Building a company

Over his career, Frank has built multiple extremely successful businesses. We asked for advice on US expansion, growing, and his reflection on his exit.

Like many other Canadian companies, Baylis Medical took the approach of selling into the US from Canada. Frank credits Kris, his business partner, for driving the effort to enter the market before they had fully conquered Canada. He suggests the same strategy for those growing a business in Canada. Become an international company as soon as you can.

As you grow a company into different markets, the founding team has to adapt. Frank argues that if you can’t grow and change to be the person the business needs, the business won’t be able to grow. He credits his ability to adapt, but is quick to deflect from recognition.

Frank cautions against the myth of the “self-made man”, saying that to be truly successful you need a team you trust. Success is never driven by just one person’s vision, but instead by consistent time, energy, and effort.

Politics

In Frank’s case, he credits much to Kris Shah, his partner in all his companies. Even when Frank decided to run for office in 2015, Kris was supportive. Frank was elected as the Member of Parliament for Pierrefonds—Dollard. In his term, he most enjoyed meeting constituents. Term limits is one issue he regrets not being able to get passed, as he doesn’t think that career politicians are what Canada needs in this moment.

On this issue, he was in favour of an 8 or 10 year limit, but found that only MPs that were not running for re-election would support the bill. He feels that at times, Canada has become overly partisan, stepping into a “left versus right” or an “us versus them” mentality. Frank preferred to work across party lines, and believes that good policy, even from opposing parties, should count as good policy, as effective ideas come from every group. At the end of the day, everyone should act like they’re on Team Canada.

Shooting movies

At the time of filming, Frank had just returned from shooting a new movie in Colombia with his production company, called ‘The Last Cargo’. It features ‘Game of Thrones’ star Iain Glen and ‘Vikings’ star Katheryn Winnick. Keep an eye out for it when it releases.

In the meantime, listen to the full episode on any platform where you get your podcasts.

If you missed the first or second episodes of Building The North with Build Canada CEO Lucy Hargreaves and Venn Co-Founder Ahmed Shafik, you can catch up now on any of our platforms.