Age: 36
Job Title: Lead, Health & Health Care Initiatives, Alberta Innovates Health Solutions
Why He’s Top 40: For advancing the quality of Alberta healthcare by ushering in new technologies to help patients and doctors.
Hobby: “I’m a big fan of cooking and trying different foods out there.”
Hameed Khan is a firm believer that business and science are the two main drivers of innovative health care. The problem, however, is that the two sides frequently don’t talk to each other. That’s where Khan comes in.
“I blend the two worlds together,” says Khan. “And, when you do that, you are able to substantially increase the value proposition of health care.”
Khan’s job at Alberta Innovates – made possible when the provincial government passed the Alberta Research and Innovation Act in 2009, to seek out technologies that could maintain a sustainable healthcare system – is challenging. But Khan has found ways to accelerate healthcare service delivery by focusing on efficiency and appropriateness of the necessary technology. He’s especially proud of a process that will implement a method to remotely monitor arrhythmia patients by 2017.
“There are 4,000 health technologies that hit the market every year,” says Khan. “Our system right now is only able to evaluate two a year. Considering that each technology has a lifetime of three or four years, we need mechanisms to validate or test these technologies and get them quickly to patients.”
In his downtime, he also founded an organization called GOOD (Genomics of Orphaned Diseases) Canada and has developed a crowdfunding model to help patients suffering from rare diseases get access to DNA sequences to help find answers to their afflictions.
“I feel there is a moral responsibility to help the community,” says Khan. “This knowledge, when used meaningfully, can lead people to more effective treatment.”
