Our mission at AssistIQ is to make healthcare more affordable and sustainable. We’re often asked about how we got started tackling the problem of hospital supply waste. This is our founding story, built on years of friendship, startup grit and conviction that we could build an AI intelligence platform to make a meaningful difference to health systems and our communities.
Compelling Data
The initial idea for AssistIQ started with Dr. Moishe Liberman, a thoracic surgeon and the director of the Technology, Innovation and Development (TID) Lab at the CHUM research centre.
As a surgeon, Moishe saw the growing usage of disposable devices and supplies in the operating room and throughout the hospital. There was a lot of research around how cost education led to efficiencies and Moishe thought it would be interesting to expand the concept with real-time tracking which led to a clinical study performed with his research team.
The initial data was compelling, with cost savings of over 20% in surgical supplies without impacting patient outcomes. When other departments heard about it they wanted to try it but Moishe knew the prototype wouldn’t scale and set out to find a team of experienced entrepreneurs and software experts who could make this happen with a user-friendly approach for hospitals around the world.
Our Founding Team
Lisa Israelovitch – Chief Executive Officer, Mundeep Minhas – Chief Product Officer, Thierry Wong – Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Moishe Liberman – Chief Medical Officer
We’ve worked together for a number of years in both startups and enterprises. Mundeep & Thierry met early in their careers at the Toronto Stock Exchange, leading development teams at the time the trading engine was brought in-house. Years later, Lisa & Thierry co-founded Umapped together, a SaaS travel software solution where Mundeep led the development of the mobile platform. Following the acquisition by Flight Centre, we scaled the company and team across the enterprise and then took some time off to think about what we wanted to do next. We worked well together and wanted to leverage our experience in both startups and enterprises to build something meaningful for a very large market.
When Moishe told us about his work, we were intrigued. We believed that helping hospitals become more efficient was an important problem.
We met with the CHUM leadership and were energized by Dr. Fabrice Brunet, Kathy Malas and their leadership team who were passionate about finding a solution to the problem. Shortly after, we founded AssistIQ.
A Growing Market
We started by digging into the market and learned that disposable medical supplies and devices are the largest variable cost for hospitals after wages, with the market doubling over the next 5 years.
We spoke to dozens of health systems to uncover their biggest challenges around supply management and found several common themes. They lacked visibility and accurate data around the products used for each surgery. Nurses lacked time and were bogged down with manual processes for recording supply usage taking their energy and focus away from patient care. Preference cards, which are made up of the supplies prepared for surgeries, were a manual process and often didn’t include the supplies that ended up being used. And surgeons genuinely wanted to contribute to the sustainability and efficiency of the system.
Our Living Lab
We’re fortunate to have the CHUM as our living lab which provides us with a super power to quickly iterate on our products. Since our initial deployments, we’ve expanded to multiple departments and procedures.
We have daily input from nurses, surgeons and leadership which helps us prioritize new capabilities. We knew early on that accurate data capture of product usage was a big challenge. Our solution captures a new and valuable data set for hospitals that leads to efficiencies on many levels.
Our Community
Selling into healthcare is not easy, and we are grateful for our investors and our community who believe in our mission and team. A shout out to our mentors and friends at Centech, CTS, CTA and Medical Alley who have helped us expand our community.
With their support, we’ve grown our team to 10 full-time members & an advisory team that rolls up their sleeves to help us deliver.
We’re excited to continue delivering AssistIQ’s healthcare intelligence platform to a growing number of health systems. To stay updated, follow AssistIQ on LinkedIn.
