{"id":913065,"date":"2026-09-28T17:28:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T17:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/913065\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T17:28:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T17:28:14","slug":"ai-agents-booking-doctors-appointments-inside-pockethealths-drive-to-improve-patient-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/913065\/","title":{"rendered":"AI agents booking doctor\u2019s appointments: Inside PocketHealth\u2019s drive to improve patient care"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Rishi, left, and Harsh Nayyar founded their business, PocketHealth, to help patients get imaging results on their own time.Jenna Marie Wakani\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a critical time for Canada\u2019s economy and its business community. The country needs innovation and growth more than ever, yet businesses across a wide range of industries are facing trade disruptions, rising costs and technological change, among other challenges. This series profiles forward-thinking Canadian companies that are growing their markets by re-examining their business practices and trying new things.<\/p>\n

When Harsh Nayyar injured his ankle playing tennis while living in California\u2019s Bay Area in 2014, he received his MRI images on a CD.<\/p>\n

For Harsh and his brother Rishi, both technologists, the experience seemed shockingly outdated. Tech platforms such as YouTube and Netflix offered instant online streaming, yet medical images still needed to be burned onto physical discs.<\/p>\n

The brothers decided to tackle the problem together, launching the Toronto-based software development company PocketHealth in early 2016 to help patients access, share and understand their medical imaging records and reports \u2013 all online, from any device. Rishi is chief executive officer and his brother Harsh is chief technology officer.<\/p>\n

Ten years in, PocketHealth\u2019s platform has reached more than three million patients across Canada and the United States and operates at more than 900 sites across more than 250 health care organizations, such as UHN, Sinai Health, Trillium Health Partners, Mackenzie Health, William Osler Health System and Niagara Health. Its annual revenue, the company says, is in the $10-million to $50-million range, growing more than 25 per cent year over year.<\/p>\n

Rishi says PocketHealth\u2019s medical image sharing services help patients discover the results of a biopsy or MRI quickly and efficiently, plus patients can more easily share findings from an emergency department visit with their family physicians. <\/p>\n

The company also has examples of patients who spotted items missing in their report that they were then able to get corrected, he says. \u201cIt changed the path of their care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, the company is pursuing its second act, expanding beyond medical-image access into agentic artificial intelligence that can automate administrative tasks in hospitals and clinics, such as processing referrals and scheduling appointments. <\/p>\n

This innovation is a response to health care organizations grappling with disconnected record systems and demanding administrative work that takes time away from patient care, Rishi says. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a heavily overburdened health care system.\u201d <\/p>\n

A cure for fragmentation<\/p>\n

Dr. Andrew Pinto, a physician and director of Upstream Lab, a non-profit research lab based at MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, St. Michael\u2019s Hospital in Toronto, says that one of the big problems with Canada\u2019s health care system is that it is enormously fragmented. Individual hospitals, clinics, primary care organizations and public health have their own record systems, meaning there isn\u2019t a single electronic health record for the country.<\/p>\n

As a result, each of these systems has a different way of defining data, Dr. Pinto says, and data can\u2019t flow easily from one system to another. While PocketHealth came up with a solution that solved this fragmentation, ideally the fragmentation wouldn\u2019t exist, he adds. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are bringing a new perspective to a very old problem and they are showing us what technology can do,\u201d Dr. Pinto says, adding that Canada needs legislation that would mandate interoperability. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Rishi Nayyar, right, with his brother Harsh in the PocketHealth offices in Toronto, says they have \u201cambitious plans\u201d for how they can leverage agentic AI to improve the patient experience.Jenna Marie Wakani\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Automating time-consuming tasks with AI<\/p>\n

PocketHealth\u2019s agentic AI platform, PocketHealth Conductor, launched in late 2025. Rishi explains that Conductor has a coordinated network of AI agents that can complete non-clinical tasks autonomously.<\/p>\n

For example, when a physician sends a referral, Conductor processes it, calls the patient and immediately books an appointment live over the phone. It\u2019s also able to read faxed and uploaded documents. <\/p>\n

The aim is to automate the health care industry\u2019s time-consuming administrative workflows so providers can spend more time on patient care. And PocketHealth says Conductor is live in production today at \u201cdozens\u201d of hospitals and imaging providers in Canada and the U.S.<\/p>\n

But adoption isn\u2019t without its challenges, Rishi says. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how incredible [AI] is, every health care system, every clinic we deploy in has its own unique way of performing tasks,\u201d he explains. In other words, a company can\u2019t install an AI system without adapting it. Also, there\u2019s a lot of ongoing effort to make agentic AI systems feel human and improve \u2013 rather than impede \u2013 the care journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe obstacles are that it still requires a lot of configuration work, a lot of testing, which means you have to test very carefully, you have to roll out slowly, and I think we have very, very ambitious plans,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

From Dr. Pinto\u2019s perspective, AI has great potential. But he points out that the health care industry needs to address equity concerns around the technology, such as whether it\u2019s lifting everybody up, whether it\u2019s accurate and whether it works well for groups of people that may not have the digital literacy or devices to use it.<\/p>\n

Leveraging a technology in its \u2018infancy\u2019<\/p>\n

Investors are interested in what PocketHealth is doing. The company raised $45-million in Series B financing in March 2024, bringing their total equity funding to $75-million. The Series B financing was led by Round 13 Capital, with Deloitte Ventures and Samsung Next joining as new investors and additional investment from Questa Capital and Radical Ventures. <\/p>\n

Rishi says that at least for now, PocketHealth plans to concentrate on Canada and the U.S. as it expands its AI offerings, rather than enter new international markets. <\/p>\n

He hopes the technology will enable patients to reach out and schedule their own exams, and better understand the preparation needed for procedures instead of just receiving a phone call or a letter in the mail. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want it to be that they can call in and they\u2019re never on hold and they get their questions answered,\u201d he adds. As well, agentic AI can help new immigrants get the same quality and access of care in their first language as English speakers do. <\/p>\n

\u201cAgentic AI is still in its infancy,\u201d Rishi says. \u201cIt needs more case studies, more deployment stories. We\u2019re not even in inning one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Rishi, left, and Harsh Nayyar founded their business, PocketHealth, to help patients get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1401,62,276,49,48,19098,23512,4612,34824,1659,84,392,315272,2922,315271,315273,73035,2146,64],"class_list":["post-913065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-adveditorial","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-challenges","tag-competition","tag-finances","tag-founder","tag-growth","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-medium-sized-business","tag-noastack","tag-ordid4068390369te2","tag-pockethealth","tag-smes","tag-startup","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}