Medical

From Big Tech to Healthcare: Zameer Rizvi’s Mission to Improve Patient Care

Ontario-based Zameer Rizvi is the Founder & CEO of Odesso and has a great entrepreneurial story.

Zameer has two decades of institutional and professional experience with notable companies such as Amazon, VMware, Amgen, Citrix, and Blackberry.

Patient care has been deeply neglected as healthcare systems are overburdened and underfunded. Zameer recognized this in and realized he had to do something and so he launched Odesso in 2017. Odesso helps healthcare providers shift focus back to the patient by alleviating operational challenges. The company powers some of the most notable players in North America’s healthcare industry today. Odesso helps healthcare providers shift focus back to the patient by alleviating operational challenges. The company powers some of the most notable players in North America’s healthcare industry today.

He’d love to share his journey, why he started the company, where it’s at and how it’s helping solve one of North America’s biggest health challenges today.


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From launching in the pandemic to leading change in bio-technology

Dr. Stephanie Willerth is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Victoria and an international leader in biomaterials and tissue engineering. She founded the award-winning biotechnology spin off company – Axolotl Biosciences in March 2020. The company sells bio-inks for printing human tissues.


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When fundraising make sure your deck is solid, the story is solid and you have the right investor

Liran Belenzon is the CEO of BenchSci, a biomedical artificial intelligence company he co-founded in 2016. BenchSci’s mission is to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving research, by empowering scientists to design more successful experiments.

BenchSci has grown to over 300 people and raised more than $200 million from top investors, including Google’s Gradient Ventures and F-Prime. BenchSci works with 15 of the world’s top 20 pharma companies, over 4,300 academic institutions, and more than 40,000 scientists. As CEO, Liran strives to inspire people to be the best version of themselves and to make a positive impact on the world. Liran emigrated to Toronto, Canada, and completed his MBA at The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. While at Rotman, he worked in the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), where he met BenchSci co-founders Tom Leung, David Chen, and Elvis Wianda. As a passionate entrepreneur, Liran envisions a future where Toronto and Canada are global leaders in entrepreneurship.


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Entrepreneurship is the relentless pursuit of opportunity

Purya Sarmadi is a healthcare professional with an accomplished background in healthcare technology. He is a health informatics and analytics professional that has become an entrepreneur. Purya is Co-Founder & CEO at MedMe Health where they are building the operating system for the pharmacies of the future, shifting today’s dispensaries to tomorrow’s community healthcare hubs. Pharmacies are in the community. 95% of North Americans live within 5 miles of a pharmacy. Primary care is in a crisis and chronic diseases are increasing. And so that’s kind of why they started Medme. And today they are already Canada’s leading clinical services platform for pharmacies.


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A passion for the future of health care

Dr. Anmol Kapoor is an experienced Cardiologist, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Humanitarian, Innovator, and founder of many successful healthcare ventures. His interests are in Artificial Intelligence, Genomics, Blockchain technologies.

In medicine, his interests are in primary and secondary prevention of cardiac diseases, vascular medicine, epidemiology, heart failure, genomics, women’s health and health initiatives in visible minorities.

He completed medical school in Russia and gained technical knowledge in the management of information systems at the University of Lethbridge. Strong healthcare services professional with a Internal Medicine residency at the University of Alberta and completed Cardiology residency at the University of Manitoba. He mastered Carotid Ultrasounds at the Cleveland Clinic.

He is an author, a public speaker and an International award winner for his work in the field of improving healthcare outcomes in vulnerable minorities and women.

Dr. Anmol Kapoor also founded BioAro, a biotechnology company specializing in genomics, artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. BioAro offers Whole Genome Sequencing, Microbiome testing, and software solutions.


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Craft a Clear North Star: Align Your Business Around Mission and Vision for Entrepreneurial Success!

Mick Lautt is an established entrepreneur, currently serving as the co-founder and CEO of SciMar Ltd. As CEO, Mick leads a family-driven business and a team of scientists, business development professionals, and investment relations specialists in developing and unveiling a new scientific approach for the prevention, detection, and treatment of type 2 diabetes. Under Mick’s leadership, SciMar has attracted over 100 investors and developed SciMar NuPa Test, a proprietary diagnostic test meal now in clinical trials.


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When is an intrapreneur an entrepreneur?

With a 10x growth from 40-400 franchises in the past decade Cathy Thorpe CEO of NurseNextDoor is a classic example of a founder bringing in a driven entrepreneur to build a business. Cathy Thorpe brings over two decades of leadership experience in the retail industry to Nurse Next Door. Cathy joined the company in 2014 with the mission of growing the business across North America. Cathy has achieved her goal by pushing boundaries to deliver measurable results and by disrupting the home care space. Cathy has been recognized for delivering strong results in the business community across North America. Nurse Next Door was awarded Canada’s most admired corporate culture by Waterstone in 2018 and was ranked #50 on Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500 list for 2018.


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Become an entrepreneur for the right reasons because it’s not an easy ride

Two Canadian entrepreneurs, Tyler Dyck, Co-Founder & COO, and Brandon Goode Co-Founder & CEO, have partnered with global leaders in the mental health space to solve a growing issue in Canada. Despite the increasing ubiquity of antidepressants, their use cases, treatment durations, and side effects are widely misunderstood. The drugs have undoubtedly helped many Canadians facing anxiety and depression (candidly, including myself), but a sharp rise in long-term use (treatment guidelines say they are only supposed to be used for six-to-nine months!) has led to a growing problem: people don’t know how to get off of them safely—and no one is talking about it.

When Tyler Dyck decided he wanted to discontinue his antidepressants after years of treatment, he was met with a lack of information and resources surrounding withdrawal and ended up yo-yo-ing, much to the detriment of his mental and physical health. He found a major gap in recommendations he was receiving from doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists, and chatted about this with his former colleague Brandon Goode, whose background in the healthcare space had him investigating similar issues. They quickly realized that there was no existing solution to a major issue more and more of their loved ones were facing.

Together with world-leading scientists and healthcare professionals, they created Outro Health, the first patient-focused, science-based off-ramp for antidepressants, which just launched in Canada. Outro’s user-friendly platform provides science-based, personalized tapering plans to slowly reduce medication dosage. It also provides proactive symptom monitoring, one-on-one chats and video appointments with practitioners trained specifically in safely stopping antidepressants, and a patient-first approach that minimizes the risk of relapse and maximizes the chance of successful tapering.


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The key to a long career in pharmaceutical R&D

Dr. Allen Davidoff is the founder and CEO of XORTX. Allen has 15 years of drug development experience across a broad range of clinical, regulatory and senior management roles in pharmaceutical R&D. He has led two investigational new drug (“IND”) applications or supplemental IND’s, two phase I studies (four of which were multi-country), seven phase II studies, and one new drug application (NDA). Prior to forming XORTX, Allen was the Chief Scientific Officer, VP Product Development and co-founder of Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp. (seven years) ( Trillium TRIL:NASDAQ) and Senior Scientist and Head of Pharmacology at Cardiome Pharma Corp.


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Running a public company is a whole business in itself

Payton Nyquvest is CEO of Numinus Wellness Inc., a leading, integrated mental health care company providing psychedelic-assisted therapies. Payton has an incredible personal healing story to share about his journey with psychedelics and what led him on this new path of conscious leadership and making psychedelic therapy available and accessible for everyone. Numinus Wellness Inc. is a leading, integrated mental health care company providing psychedelic-assisted therapies, with 13 wellness clinics across North America, four clinical research sites and a bio-analytical research lab. Numinus is one of the top revenue-generating companies in the psychedelics sector, working to address a growing societal need by providing a wide range of proven and innovative therapies to treat and potentially cure mental health conditions. Numinus is the only company in Canada with permission from Health Canada to grow and extract psilocybin for research for anxiety, depression and PTSD.


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