Earlier this year, Grand River Hospital proudly became the first teaching community hospital in Canada to partner with Signal 1 to explore a clinical decision support system powered by artificial intelligence. Signal 1 equips doctors and nurses with real-time predictions that drive better patient outcomes and improve hospital flow. The system builds on algorithms developed, and currently in use, at St. Michael’s Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto.

Last week, Tomi Poutanen, Co-founder & CEO, Signal 1, was named as one of the Top 10 Health Care Innovators in Maclean's 2023 Power List. Excitingly, Grand River Hospital's partnership with Signal 1 was also highlighted in the piece, a testament to the forward-thinking innovation taking place in our community and local health sector. Here is the excerpt on Tomi Poutanen and Signal 1:

Tomi Poutanen is putting AI to work in our ERs

Co-founder & CEO, Signal 1

Pull back the curtain on many of Canada’s most exciting AI-driven projects and you’ll likely find Tomi Poutanen at the helm. (A couple biggies: Toronto’s tech-focused venture-capital outfit Radical Ventures and machine-learning research firm Layer 6, which was snapped up by TD Bank in 2018 for a cool US$100 million.) With Signal 1, Poutanen is using all that AI acumen to improve patient flow in and out of Canada’s overcrowded ERs and hospital beds (which continue to be premium real estate). In January, Signal 1 was rolled out at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario, where it analyzed the facility’s wealth of electronic medical records and delivered real-time data on how and when to discharge patients directly to some presumably grateful docs. Here’s another prediction: Signal 1 is likely to scale Canada-wide.

Learn more about Grand River Hospital's collaboration with Signal 1, or read the full article on Maclean's website. The others to make the top 10 include Alika Lafontaine, Canadian Medical Association; Gabor Maté, physician & author; Michael Dingle, COO, Telus Health; Leigh Chapman, Chief Nursing Officer; Timothy Caulfield, professor & author; Mona Gupta, psychiatrist, University of Montreal; John Sinclair, President, Novari Health; Patricia Gauthier, President & General Manager, Moderna Canada; and Alan Forster, Executive Vice-President, Chief Innovation & Quality Officer, Ottawa Hospital.