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Lynda Brown-Ganzert curatio
From Gaming to Health Tech, She Created a Social Network That Can Heal LYNDA BROWN-GANZERT HAS
" always been a bit ahead of her time. She started a ballet school at the age of 14, created a social messaging app before WhatsApp hit the scene and designed a multiplayer mobile video game more than a decade before Fortnight was conceived. Now, with Curatio, the serial entrepreneur is gazing into the future of healthcare, predicting how social networks can play a role in care coordination. Dossier Her platform, Curatio which provides CEO / Founder AI-driven and curatio.me peer-supported @curatiome care navigation, HQ: Vancouver is being used in 70 countries. In clinical results, Brown-Ganzert and team have shown that private peer groups created around health conditions and goals can not only meaningfully improve outcomes, but also provide a more valuable way to address patient acquisition and retention. What’s more, they create much-needed community, helping patients feel less alone.
Q&A You started your first business at age 14. What was that experience like and how did it shape you?
When I was 14, I moved with my family to Haida Gwaii, a remote northern region of Canada. It was a remarkable place at the end of the world. I’d moved from Vancouver, in the city, where I’d studied ballet
Track Record In 2017, Brown-Ganzert received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Startup Canada.
since I was five. Haida Gwaii, where my father was working for a telecommunications company, was a logging and fishing town of about 1500 people, and there was obviously no dance school. So I started my own. We were profitable the first year. I had about 60 students, and put on recitals that sold out. I taught, I took care of admin, I swept the floors. So the lack of resources become the mother of invention.
I think that’s a unifying personality trait for all entrepreneurs. We look at something and think, how can I fix this? It’s so empowering to get to do that at a young age. It becomes quite addicting in a way. Growing up in remote Canada, you must have a better appreciation than most of the value of telemedicine.
Gosh, yes. I remember we had to fly out for dentist appointments. As a kid I had to take two days out of school and fly down to Vancouver
We talked to Lynda about how her entrepreneurial roots shaped her as a Health Transformer, and why we need to think differently about “gamifying” healthcare.
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