WIMTACH partners with Qube Medical Hub on an applied research project

Alarmed by the ongoing shortages of healthcare professionals and family physicians in Canada, Rizwan Shaik set out to use his medical educational background to be a part of the solution to this problem. As a result, in 2021, Rizwan teamed up with medical experts and business partners to launch Qube Medical Hub with a mission to improve the healthcare experience for communities in the Greater Toronto Area. As a technology-infused medical clinic and family practice, Qube Medical Hub has a mission to personalize patient care and improve health outcomes for communities.

After learning of WIMTACH’s previous successful collaboration with another industry partner, in developing a custom marketplace, Rizwan engaged WIMTACH in a partnership for an applied research project in the development of a MedTech application. Rizwan was particularly interested in a collaboration because of WIMTACH’s connection to professors and students who could turn his vision into reality. He was excited to see innovations from eager students who were enthusiastic about investigating the pain points they observed in patient care. “[WIMTACH] was a perfect match for me,” he said.

To scale the resources and capabilities of Qube Medical Hub, Shaik collaborated with WIMTACH in developing a mobile application that will enable patients to better track their healthcare journey right from the moment they decide to seek assistance for any health concern. This custom application will enable patients to develop a unique patient persona. It will also provide the means for them to schedule services and track their healthcare journey as they receive treatments for health concerns and chronic conditions such as diabetes. “If we can scale it across [the health care sector] and make it even appealing for a larger population, we can actually move the needle towards better healthcare for everybody,” he said.

The WIMTACH research team has designed the user experience and interface portions of the application and is now moving forward with the development phase of the application. “I’m really loving what it looks like,” said Rizwan. He has described the WIMTACH team as attentive, particularly during the early stages of project development. “As Founders, we have been through a lot to come up with a solution and I think WIMTACH and the students at Centennial College … fully listen and understand what our vision is,” he said.

The leadership team for the project helped to create practical applications for Qube Medical Hub’s vision and simplify complex ideas into an actionable project development plan. This plan was created with consideration of his wish to develop a product with basic features, but with the potential to be scaled in the future. “I was probably a little more complicated in the way I approached it and then the lead professor that was involved in the project said, ‘let’s simplify it, let’s make these features something you can test over the next three to six months while you launch your clinic operations and then we can have a next-generation upgrade,’” he said. Moreover, the student researchers for this project helped Rizwan to see what was possible to develop well, and in the shortest amount of time. This enabled him to measure how long it would take to develop features and understand when concepts were too complicated and, therefore, likely to pose a challenge for future iterations.

Notably, the landscape of the development style at WIMTACH has also given him the freedom to explore different ideas for his application and test for changes and adjustments. “The team that I am working with right now is great and they are doing a good job so far,” he said. Rizwan hopes to use the application to engage his patients better. The immediate feedback from the application will enable his team to assess how to improve upon the services at the Hub Clinic and evaluate the overall health journey of each patient. He will also use the application to look at the number of patients that have engaged with the team. Rizwan finally said: “We are thrilled at the prospect of improving the quality of care and delivering meaningful results for the communities we serve. We are engaging with both public and private sector stakeholders to make this solution a reality. We are hopeful for what the future beholds”. Ultimately, their team hopes to reach a 50 percent increase in engagement from his patients and see an improvement in the efficiency of his Hub team once the application is launched in April 2023.

For further information, please send press inquiries to ptyagi@centennialcollege.ca