Congratulations to 40 Under 40 Winner: Dr. Joshua Liu, CEO & Co-Founder, SeamlessMD
Get To Know Dr. Joshua Liu:
Age (as of December 31, 2023): 35
Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Alma Matter: University of Toronto
Number of Years of Experience in Healthcare: 14
Someone You Look Up to in the Industry: Devin Gross
Favorite Hobby: Basketball
Favorite Movie of All-Time: Horizon
Your Favorite thing about healthcare: There’s nothing more rewarding than collaborating with mission-driven people to improve the health of others
Why is this candidate a good fit for 40 under 40?
As a physician turned entrepreneur, Dr. Liu leverages his entrepreneurial spirit, his medical training, and passion for helping people to enhance care quality and delivery. His medical training brings a unique perspective as he collaborates with health systems to translate innovation into the way they work at scale across clinical workflows to address healthcare consumerism, deliver virtual care management solutions, and empower people to actively participate in their own care. Dr. Liu graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Toronto. During his medical training, he co-led a research project at the University Health Network (Canada’s largest academic medical center) on hospital readmissions and sat on UHN’s physician advisory group for post-hospital discharge follow up. As a result, Joshua was inspired to use technology to engage, monitor and stay connected with patients to prevent adverse outcomes such as a readmission - which ultimately led to him co-founding SeamlessMD. Over the past decade, Joshua’s leadership as a Digital Health Executive paved the way for the adoption of SeamlessMD’s Digital Patient Engagement and Remote Monitoring Platform across nearly 50 hospitals and health systems across North America, including Atrium Health, UAB, Stanford Health Care, University Hospitals, MultiCare and more. Under his leadership, SeamlessMD has produced the most clinical evidence in the market (35+ clinical studies/evaluations demonstrating lower mortality, readmissions, length of stay, ER visits, costs) and become the first and only digital patient engagement and remote monitoring platform to achieve turnkey integrations with Epic, Oracle Cerner and MEDITECH. While certainly a team effort, much of this is certainly due to Joshua’s tremendous leadership as a Digital Health Executive. His passion for leveraging Digital Health to improve patient care has earned him the trust of many in the healthcare community – from the employees who have chosen to join the SeamlessMD mission because they were inspired by Joshua’s story, to the many hospital administrators and front-line clinicians who have bought-in to SeamlessMD and Digital Health because of Joshua’s subject matter expertise and authentic leadership style. His laser focus on building a culture of acceptance, diversity and inclusion has proven to be a key driver behind the growth of the company. The winning culture has enabled Dr. Liu to amass a team of highly talented individuals ranging from healthcare practitioners with experience in pharmacy, nutrition, public health, adult education, and scientific communication to health science technologists to industry professionals dedicated to revolutionizing the patient experience to make healthcare more efficient and accessible to everyone. Resulting in public recognition by The Great Place to Work Institute, the global authority on high-trust, high-performance workplace cultures, in 2021, 2022 and 2023 as the Best Workplaces in Healthcare, in Technology, for Women and ranked as one of the top 30 Great Places to Work in Canada. In 2022, SeamlessMD was named the CAN Health Network Company of the Year, for two consecutive years SeamlessMD has been named to the AVIA Marketplace Top Remote Patient Monitoring Companies Report and the company earned a KLAS Research Spotlight Report.
Explain this candidate’s professional accomplishments:
Being at the helm of a digital health company and successfully steering the company through the tumultuous tides of healthcare over the past four years is no small feat. The pandemic shuttered many digital health companies as funding dried up, health systems were preoccupied with the pandemic and keeping the lights on and we’re not out of the deep yet as healthcare leaders struggle with financial woes, staff shortages, and physician burnout. Throughout this time, SeamlessMD’s CEO, Dr. Liu who is responsible for the company’s vision, strategies, goals, and oversees all aspects of the business from operations, go-to market strategies, business development, strategic alliances, and customer success continued to drive customer adoption, revenue and demand for the company’s Digital Care Journey and Remote Monitoring solution across North America. With a passion for healthcare innovation and customer outcomes, Dr. Liu has received numerous honours, including being named the 2021 Digital Health Executive of the Year by Digital Health Canada, 2014 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science and Healthcare, and 2005 Canadian Top 20 Under 20. As the Chief Evangelist, Dr. Liu is instrumental in establishing the company’s leadership in our emerging digital health category within core markets, educating the market on the value of embracing digital care journeys to optimize the patient experience and reducing high-cost services such as readmissions, length of stay and ED visits. Dr. Liu frequently speaks at industry events on key issues such as the transformation of healthcare, digital patient journeys, enhanced recovery after surgery, role of entrepreneurs in health tech, understanding clinical workflows, healthcare consumerism trends, the importance of innovation-priority fit before reaching product-market fit, and how health systems can leverage technology to reduce readmissions, shorten length of stay and lower costs. He is a CHIME Foundation member, and hosts The Digital Patient rated in 2022 as one of the top 30 best digital health podcasts and in 2023 as the top digital patient engagement podcast. On the show Dr. Liu, speaks with healthcare, technology, and innovation leaders about the latest advancements in digital health, trends in digital transformation, the rise of consumerism in healthcare, digital patient engagement trends, and strategies for optimizing the patient experience. As an innovator and founder of a company that is at the bleeding edge of digital health, Dr. Liu is leading the way demonstrated by SeamlessMD being the first digital patient engagement solution with proven turn-key EHR integrations with Epic, Oracle Cerner and MEDITECH, an evidence-based content library unlike any other in the industry and leading the category with the most clinical evidence (the most studies/evaluations published) supporting a solution. From humble beginnings ten years ago, Dr. Joshua Liu remains steadfast and focused on improving the delivery of healthcare by transforming how providers engage, monitor, and stay connected with patients across healthcare journeys to ensure every patient receives the right care at the right time
How does the candidate show commitment to the industry and bettering their professional career?
A leader in healthcare innovation, Dr. Liu has served as Chair of the Joule Innovation Council for the Canadian Medical Association and on the Advisory Group to the Office of the Chief Health Innovation Strategist for the Ontario Ministry of Health. Dr. Liu is regularly invited to speak on Digital Health to healthcare administrators, clinicians, students and industry professionals. For example, Joshua has been a speaker at Epic’s Annual App Orchard conference, MEDITECH’s Annual Live Conference, TEDx, to the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto and Dalhousie University, Rotman’s Global Health MBA program, Health TO, McMaster University’s DeGroote Interprofessional Health Leadership Conference, Queen’s University’s Canadian Undergraduate Conference and many others. Dr. Liu is also an avid writer, contributing articles on Digital Health, quality and patient safety to healthcare publications such as Healthcare IT Today, KevinMD, TheHealthcareBlog and Canadian Healthcare Technology. With more than 10 years of experience collaborating with providers, and thousands of conversations, as a medical professional, innovator and founder of a digital health start up, Dr. Joshua Liu brings a unique perspective to the conversation from both a technology, healthcare, and business perspective. While some may lean to one side of the conversation as a technologist or a healthcare professional, Dr. Liu brings a unique blend of all perspectives to the discussion. Plus, his own personal experience as a caregiver to a family member undergoing a life-impacting episode of care drives his strong perspective on why more health systems should be adopting digital solutions to make a meaningful impact and improvement on the patient and caregiver experience. Customer-centricity is a key value that guides Dr. Liu’s focus as he remains committed to the company’s mission to ensure every patient receives the right care at the right time. From a professional learning and personal growth perspective, Dr. Liu relies on colleagues, mentors, and peers for ongoing business and market guidance across a spectrum of topics. As an avid reader, Dr. Liu keeps up-to-date with current affairs, healthcare policies, and market trends through various healthcare publications, social media, and e-newsletters.
