Back in December 2004, Telus (TSX:T) president and chief executive officer Darren Entwistle’s father, Desmond, was in a Montreal hospital receiving treatment for an illness.
The senior Entwistle spiked a fever and the medical team administered penicillin, overlooking the MedicAlert bracelet on his wrist. Severely allergic to penicillin, Desmond Entwistle went into shock and died six days later.
The tragedy reshaped Darren Entwistle’s life and set Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company down a very distinct path, leading to the inception of what is now Telus Health.
The company has invested about $1.5 billion in health care since 2008, starting with the takeover of Emergis. This figure makes Telus the largest provider of electronic medical records (EMR) in Canada.
Josh Blair, executive vice-president of Telus Health, president of the company’s Business Solutions West and chair of Telus International, said that fatal medical treatment error in Montreal ultimately led to a massive undertaking.
“Darren starting thinking about how there must be a better way to provide information intelligently to caregivers and patients so the whole health care system can operate more effectively,” Blair said.
After acquiring Emergis, Telus Health expanded into a range of health care areas including automated pharmacy records, health analytics and claims and benefits management. Telus Health has more than 1,600 employees working directly on various projects in various stages of development. Blair himself, who has been with Telus 21 years, earned a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Victoria and he also serves as the company’s chief corporate officer, based out of Telus Garden on West Georgia Street.
Blair’s roles within the company during his decades-plus career mirror the many departments Telus has developed since inception in 1990. Aside from his duties as Telus’ chief corporate officer, and his roles heading up Business Solutions West and Telus International, he also oversees Sourcing Solutions, which outsources human resource and talent management services from the company. He also looks after Telus Ventures, which invests in technology startups that have products or devices that could prove useful to the company.
At the helm of Telus International, Blair looks after contact-centre and business processing services for corporate clients, provided by 22,000 international employees located in North and Central America, Asia and Europe.
Closer to home, Blair also serves on the board of governors and executive committee for the Business Council of British Columbia, the governors council of i-Canada, the board of directors for the Sandbox Project and the board of advisors for the Cures for Kids Foundation, as well as being vice-chair of the Telus Vancouver Community Board.
But Blair’s work with Telus Health, with its ambitious mandate and position at the intersection of private initiative and public health care, is unique.
Vancouver, like any major metropolis, is full of health care agencies and departments. The Lower Mainland itself has multiple health authorities – Providence Health Care, Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health – plus a number of specialized agencies that fall under the Provincial Health Services Authority banner, including the BC Cancer Agency and the BC Centre for Disease Control.
“If you think traditionally, a patient within the health care system has had to navigate multiple silos,” Blair said. “And what we’re trying to enable is for the patient to be put in the centre of the health care system.”
Blair said the organization is “decades away” from achieving that goal, but the result could signal a new era of health care delivery. Statistics Canada recently reported that there are now more Canadians over 65 than under 15, and that gap will only grow with time, making the need for a streamlined health care systemseven more important.
Earlier this year, Health Minister Terry Lake pledged $5 million for Better at Home, a non-medical home support program designed to help seniors live independently while receiving specialized assistance. Blair noted Telus Health’s projects include a consumer-grade home monitoring system that can detect falls, and also a blood-pressure monitor that goes to the primary caregiver of an elderly parent.
With its main focus on electronic medical records, Telus Health embraces the goal of a universal system – one patient, one record, Blair said. What this means is every patient can seamlessly transition between authorities, hospitals and family doctors for various services, while their records go along with them and are updated automatically.
