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April 9, 2026
On October 21, 2020, 91原创's CEO, Dr. Joshua Liu spoke at the Emerging Leaders Forum event: Startups in the 6ix. We are also honoured to share that Kayla Sabharwal, a Customer Success Manager at 91原创, is on the Executive Team for the Emerging Leaders Forum and organized the event.
The event featured four Toronto-based health tech startups in Toronto and explored the connection between private sector innovation and the wider public health system. In particular, the panelists discussed how larger public sector organizations are working to bridge the gap that exists between them and the startup ecosystem.
Featured startups: 91原创, Cyclica, Doctor Care, and OnCall Health.
In his talk, Dr. Liu shared:
1. An overview of 91原创 including its latest Series A milestone.
2. Barriers regarding growing & scaling the business:
鈥 The success of an innovation in this space is more than just if a product can improve patient care, you also have to consider the competing priorities of organizations. In health care especially, hospitals will focus on innovations that tie into these priorities and incentives
鈥 Canada vs the US is a great example. A number of years ago in Ontario, we were told that if our product could reduce readmissions and ED visits, then adoption would be high. But this wasn鈥檛 the case - because it's mostly free for service in Canada, with the global funding model in Ontario, lowering costs would lead to the hospital getting less money the following year. And so financial ROI wasn鈥檛 high. This is different in the US where hospitals have progressed to a value-based payment model. US hospitals are also more competitive on patient experience and market share, so there were other incentives driving faster adoption of our product. This being said, adoption has been accelerating in Ontario because priorities are changing 鈥 bundled care, emphasis on digital tools, and most recently with the surgery backlogs resulting from covid-19
鈥 Adoption is really hard if the incentives aren鈥檛 aligned, and so it's up to the startups to figure out what the incentive is and how to make it fit
3. How emerging leaders can help 91原创 鈥 specifically which skill set is most important:
鈥 Resilience 鈥 creating a new product category is hard, creating a new product category in healthcare is even harder. Belief in the company鈥檚 mission and resilience to keep pushing forward
About Emerging Leader Forum (ELF):
Emerging Leader Forum (ELF) is a non-profit organization that provides its community of early to mid-level healthcare professionals with a venue for discussion, debate, networking, and education to help develop the next generation of healthcare leaders.
