When he began working on a system that would help doctors, dentists and pharmacists exchange medical information electronically, François Gratton knew all too well that health care in Canada was a provincial matter. He saw that the delivery of the data, whether it was patient files or pharmacy client records, lacked a national identity. He believed that if the information were going to be effectively shared, it would need to be part of a system that could speak nationally and communicated between those organizations that needed pathways stretching across the country.
Five years ago, Mr. Gratton began to solve a lot of that fragmentation through his work with Emergis, which has since been renamed Telus Health. The time was ripe; many health ministries were putting money into e-records and many clients and associations were craving more digital records. In less than four years, he spearheaded seven acquisitions of companies that were dealing in e-health records regionally, but with different protocols, and began to put together a cohesive electronic platform.
Mr. Gratton is credited with building a national pharmacy database and setting in motion a national network run by Telus, which provides wireless technology, as well as information and communications solutions.
Telus's pharmacy division went from no revenue and employees in 2004, to $46-million in revenues and 231 employees in 2009.
In acknowledging his success, the Harvard Business School grad, who also holds a law degree from the University of Montreal, talks more about his team’s efforts, saying that he is fortunate to be with a group of talented individuals. He calls them “a world-class team” that works together, discusses, debates and disagrees, while keeping a goal in mind: to build a comprehensive electronic health network.
He recently became senior vice president of sales and marketing for Telus Quebec and is working closely with Telus’ top brass.
Since his CEGEP days, when he turned around a computer co-op store that he managed, Mr. Gratton recognized in himself an ability to make something from very little. Now married and a father of two children, he says he feels best when he can look proudly at something he’s helped build.
He talks about a future when digital information will be even more fluid and more accessible, a time, one imagines, when provincial jurisdictions will not dictate how that information flows.
|
Meet 2009's Top 40:
|
Editor's note: This is a corrected version of the story. A previous version had incorrectly cited revenue and employee numbers for Telus Health, rather than the pharmacy division.
