Next Healthcare Technologies was incorporated in 2013 as a Canadian-owned, founder bootstrapped, Ontario-based company.
The company was founded by physician Dr. Ketan Patel and two IT specialists – Adam Davis, who founded Next Dimension and Chris Burgess, who is the founder and CEO of Net Direct.
The company recently launched CareCDS, which is a cloud-based medical office software system that addresses a massive blind spot in healthcare – the over two million healthcare waiting rooms in North America.
Here’s Dr. Patel to tell us more about this exciting new venture.
Q: Tell us a bit about the origins of Next Healthcare Technologies
DR. PATEL: After 12 years as a practicing physician, the last 8 focusing on the treatment of chronic pain and addiction, Next Healthcare was borne out the frustration of a medical market which is suffering from a glut of inefficient paper handling and data siloes. After speaking to hundreds of fellow practitioners at medical conferences around the world, we realized the problem was widespread and there was a lack of tools out there to help physicians and patients.
I approached Adam and Chris and we formed a new organization around this problem. We combined our own paper-based standard-operating-procedures (SOPs) and protocols, plus gold standard medical questionnaires and input from colleagues, and developed our own HIPAA compliant, cloud-based hosted software called CareCDS.
What sets our clinical decision support platform apart is the application of big data to patient care and the ability to consider a holistic view of a patient’s life in order to distill more precise insights for the physician from which to draw up value-based treatment options.
Q: Sounds exciting – can you tell us a bit more about CareCDS?
DR. PATEL: Surveys are personalized and automatically deployed based on patient visit type. These contextually intelligent & personalized questionnaires gather critical data from patients as they sit waiting to be seen. In addition, our clients can also edit or customize the questionnaires to fit the needs of the patient and or the practice.
The information collected helps extend clinical teams, supports complicated clinical workflows, and gathers valuable data for reporting purposes such as registries, satisfaction, incentive reporting, billable services, referrals, etc. Based on client feedback to date, using CareCDS has also resulted in improved interactions and engagement between the patient and the healthcare team. But one of our biggest differentiators is that CareCDS separates itself from competitors by linking clinical information to downstream actions, both local and/or remote, furthering efficiency and revenue opportunities.
And our platform is fully customizable and agnostic to any healthcare setting. CareCDS also is extremely elastic with a multi-tenancy structure allowing us to assist one doctor, a multi-doctor practice or even a hospital. And key to our strategy is that CareCDS can operate in stand-alone mode and onboarding a new practice can take as little as a few minutes to get started. With multi-language translation features, we are simultaneously preparing for entering numerous foreign markets at this time.
Q: How are sales progressing?
DR. PATEL: CareCDS is now commercially available, and we now have a major channel partner in Dood Consulting – marketing and selling our solution using a software as a service (SaaS) model in the US and abroad.
www.clinicaldecisionsoftware.com
Our first cross-border enterprise contract represents $2M in USD sales alone in 2018.
Q: Exciting! How about in Canada?
How has WEtech Alliance supported your business to date?

DR. PATEL: We joined WEtech in 2015 when we were in our conceptual stage of development.
Deborah Livneh – who is the Entrepreneur-in-Residence – opened opportunities where we could connect with the right people – which was very helpful.
In addition, Yvonne Pilon and Irek Kusmierczyk assisted us along the way as supporters, advisors and connectors including participating, mentoring and judging at Hacking Health the last few years.
WEtech has become a valuable asset in Essex County and we would encourage other companies to connect with WEtech Alliance.
Looking into your company’s future, what are you most enthusiastic about?
DR. PATEL: The next 18 months will certainly be very exciting at Next Healthcare. We are on track to fund team expansion from 10 people to around 40 in Canada and the United States.
In 2019 we will be taking big strides in terms of partnership integration and regulatory paths in North America while responding to significant interest from international markets.
One of our main goals is to increase company visibility, making inroads into health and life sciences institutions, even competing in health challenges to validate our technology in Ontario while at the same time remaining involved in digital health mentorship opportunities – something we have done through organizations like Hacking Health and the annual cross-border MedHealth Summit in Detroit.
With a fully customizable platform our roadmap will take us outside healthcare into the retail setting. We hope to launch SalesCDS later this year – same great technology but with a different vertical opportunity. We have been exploring and discussing our survey applications with high-value clientele in legal and financial planning, plus the insurance industry, jewelry and a kiosk mode for high-traffic retail/service establishments (restaurants, cosmetics, hair salons, etc.). Based on our initial meetings, our longitudinal data-tracking seems to present new opportunities for retailers with repeat visit clientele.
Q: Next Healthcare has really embraced WEtech initiatives like Hacking Health and the MedHealth Summit. Tell us about that.
DR. PATEL: We’ve participated in every Hacking Health the last three years as mentors. Just the concept of bringing together creative professionals from healthcare, tech and business to work on challenges is phenomenal. You never know where an idea will come from, or where you’ll find a great employee or build that cross-border relationship which can open a door.
Hacking Health is fertile ground for all three, so we plan on being there April 13 & 14 at St. Clair College for Hacking Health Windsor + Detroit IV.
We are also planning to attend the MedHealth Summit the following week in Detroit in order to keep developing those business relationships and network with other entrepreneurs, innovative businesses, healthcare organizations and venture-backed health portfolio investors. You could say we are taking full advantage of the great potential of this rich and diverse cross-border med-health community.

Q: How can interested people or organizations connect with you?
DR. PATEL: We can be reached via our website www.carecds.com and I can be reached directly at info@nexthealthcaretechnologies.com.
