Ryan Bolton is a Toronto based photographer who has won awards and travelled the world capturing stunning images of people and places. His client roster includes Apple, Red Bull, Spotify, Gucci, SickKids and many other category leading institutions and commercial brands.

Journalism originally led Ryan to photography as a career and in this session we discuss the backstory which developed his lens on the world plus tips and tricks for improving as a career creator.

Links

StartWell Podcast on iTunes

StartWell Podcast on Spotify

Ryan Bolton's Portfolio

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Qasim Virjee 0:29

We are live. It's recording. We're all good.

Qasim Virjee 0:34

All right, welcome back to another installment of the star Well, podcast once again, it is me Qasim in the studio here on King Street West in downtown Toronto. This time joined with a creator. That's the shittiest word. We're gonna delve into that a little bit. The YouTube culture Hills kids. But basically Ryan Bolton, a man of many cameras, is here to share knowledge, from his experience engaging in creative work,

Qasim Virjee 1:07

you know, as his profession, and we're going to talk about all sorts of stuff. We'll see where the conversation goes. Thank you for joining me in the studio today, Ryan. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. Right on. So let's get started by you introducing yourself to our audience in whichever way you would like to amazing.

Ryan Bolton 1:28

So my name is Ryan Bolton. Thank you for getting that out there. And I'm a photographer. And

Ryan Bolton 1:35

I like to photograph a little bit of everything, which makes me a little different than your common everyday photographer. So I started with actually writing I was a journalist, and I was paid to travel. And as soon as I started working was actually

Ryan Bolton 1:57

in Ghana, I was at a refugee camp and I was with a organization called journalist for human rights. And I was working in this Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugee camp, and I just started taking photos, portraits. This is 2007 2008, in that ballpark. And

Ryan Bolton 2:18

there was an attachment that I immediately had with putting the photos with the writing. And it just started to click. And, sorry, pun intended. Yeah. And shoot was one of the things too, that other people started talking about editors would then want me to take a photo to go along with that, that piece that was written, which I thought was weird and broke rules at first. But then I saw saw that it was about, like, tell a full story that went hand in hand and kind of get to a crux of something, right. And I fell in love. And so I started shooting more so I started going to music festivals. I eventually became a photographer for like Way Home festival and Boots and Hearts and field trip here in Toronto. That then led to travel work. So I started working with organizations like intrepid travel, who I still work with, which is like small group adventure travel. Oh, cool. And like, like documenting groups, trips, exactly. adventure stuff. Okay, so mash up shoe climbing mash up shoe with all my camera gear. Yeah, that was one. Iceland, Morocco, sleeping in caves in the Atlas Mountains,

Ryan Bolton 3:27

Southeast Asia through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, South Africa, Egypt,

Ryan Bolton 3:35

across the United States, you know, and really kind of exploring,

Ryan Bolton 3:41

you know, just that relationship with the camera, and documenting what anybody would be like, This is amazing. You know, I just had that opportunity that I knew was an opportunity. I always knew it was an opportunity to be like, This is amazing.

Qasim Virjee 3:52

I'm guessing this is in

Leveraging technology originally developed at the University of Guelph for NASA to test the ability to grow life on Mars, Elevate Farms is building some of the worlds most cutting edge vertical farms. We invited the company's CEO and Founder Amin Jadavji to StartWell for this conversation that recounts the company's history and technology plus addresses food shortage problems brought to light by the pandemic and more.

Links:

StartWell's Digital Magazine

StartWell Podcast on iTunes

StartWell Podcast on Spotify

Elevate Farms

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Qasim Virjee 0:29

Welcome back to the start well podcast I'm Qasim as always in this episode is our 37th episode. For those of you who are tuning in via YouTube or our digital magazine and enjoying us in clear, high definition, welcome to the studio. This is where we record all the podcasts. So feel free to look back on past episodes, where you can watch a bunch of the recent ones anyway, as well in video, and for everyone on Spotify, and, you know, iTunes, and everywhere else, I hope that we sound nice and clear. Alright, today I'm in studio with Amin Jadavji from Alevate Farms.

Qasim Virjee 1:07

The last episode around if you guys caught it was Ran Goel from Fresh City Farms. And so this is becoming a kind of a theme. You know, urban farming becomes vertical farming, and we're going to talk about what that is.

Qasim Virjee 1:21

So Amin welcome to the studio. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Amin Jadavji 1:24

Amazing. Thank you for having me.

Qasim Virjee 1:26

Yeah, of course, man. I'm excited. You know, it's funny for to fill people in. You know, we started we were going to do this podcast a week ago. And we ended up talking in this very room with the mics off. And it was an awesome experience. And we just talked and we talked and we talked and we do the same thing. I think today before I press record. So I hope the rest of you enjoy the conversation that we're about to have, because it's one that's already started. So I'm in Introduce yourself.

Amin Jadavji 1:52

Yeah, so my name is I'm in today I have g I'm founder CEO of Elevate farms. We're a vertical farming technology company, based here in Toronto.

Qasim Virjee 2:05

Let's back. Let's take it back a little bit. Tell me about you as an entrepreneur, your experience becoming or otherwise always being an entrepreneur, what's your business kind of? bio data?

Amin Jadavji 2:19

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I interesting, I think it's all sort of an evolution. So I started out as a 20, something year old out of university, joining what was then a fairly small family business manufacturing paper products. And I don't think I was probably a little naive, I thought I had a couple years get some work experience and move on. The reality is, we came up with a really good business plan, and that was focus on high volume, low margin us. seems straightforward enough. The implementation of that took about 20 years. Wow. So spent two decades really just building out that. That strategy?

Qasim Virjee 3:21

How old was the company before you spent two decades there? Well,

Amin Jadavji 3:26

it That in itself is probably another really long story of, you know, entrepreneurial journey from previous generations and immigrant immigrants into Canada from from East Africa. But maybe to frame it. As we came in to that the business was early 90s. We were in a recession, free trade had just come in. So what that meant was for at least for the paper industry, and for many other industries, that was prices suddenly got 17 and a half percent cheaper for American imports, like literally

In this session we hear from the founder of Fresh City Farms - a multi-brand grocer/baker/butcher operating 8 locations across Toronto which sprouted from humble beginnings about a decade ago as an urban farming experiment in Downsview Park.

Learn more about Ran's company: https://www.freshcityfarms.com/

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Qasim Virjee 0:28

All right, welcome back to another installment of the start will podcast. This time around I'm in studio with Ren goal. Cool Girl go well, yeah, the founder of fresh city farms, who is here to tell us about life on the rangeand other fun stuff. Actually not life on the range. But yeah, fresh city farms, I break it down for our audience like what is fresh city farms and start

Ran Goel 0:54

Ah Fresh City is a company based here in the wonderful city of Toronto we farm. So we have an urban farm, apparently Canada's largest, based in Downsview park in the northwestern corner of the city. And then we deliver what we grow and what other farmers grow to households across the city. And we also operate a retail stores in central part of Toronto, big focus on organic, sustainable, seasonal, fresh food.

Qasim Virjee 1:29

Now, it's not just grocery stores that you guys run,

Ran Goel 1:32

no, it's uh, we basically are here to create a better life for food. And so for us, the way we've chosen to interpret that is help the consumer

Ran Goel 1:47

get access to food that is meticulously sourced right. So of course means organic, local produce in our early days, but it's now evolved to sourdough bread and made from organic flour

Ran Goel 2:01

100% grass fed beef that we butcher in House prepared foods that are organic and local, packaged in jars and you can return to Circular Economy way of thinking.

Ran Goel 2:13

So really connect all those kind of dots together. Because often, you know, we as consumers, you'll read about Farm to Table and organic, local, and it's often not that accessible for the average person. Yeah, it's interesting, because that's definitely something I've heard from a few people is, I mean, in big cities, especially.

Qasim Virjee 2:35

Also,

Qasim Virjee 2:37

there's an added price point to things being local.

Qasim Virjee 2:42

Because you know, gas, no, it's got nothing to do with transport. It's funnily enough transport globally is like cheap. It is. It is very, especially for bringing things by bringing things in by ship. Yeah, it's not a IT people often talk about, you know, foods coming in from 10,000 miles away. And actually, that's not a cost issue already an environmental issue, but it doesn't cost all that much. Can I ask you a few things about groceries that come from afar? Please. Okay, avocados, I know. It's a big hot topic, avocados. People love them on toast. A lot of Mentos

Qasim Virjee 3:16

but I don't understand how an avocado can get to me from Mexico

Qasim Virjee 3:24

and be perfectly about to be right.

Ran Goel 3:27

Oh, I mean the if you think about the trip from Mexico or Ecuador wherever they would come from isn't that far it's like 234 days by truck.

Ran Goel 3:40

And as long as they're picked at the right time, timing is not an issue and similarly with things like bananas I mean even you have apples and citrus and stuff coming from Africa and

Qasim Virjee 3:51

New Zealand and South Africa has really grown its exports

Ran Goel 3:54

huge huge huge huge so yeah, for a lot of you know outside of things like say raspberries or blueberries that you know depending where they come from, they have to be flown in which we first study shy away from you can get food here pretty quickly. I mean the the cold supply chain is pretty well developed now in terms of distributors, and obviously trucking companies having you know, refrigerated fleets. So it's pretty seamless I mean the

In this session we hear from one of Canada's premier experts on global licensing/merchandising and brand/franchise marketing focused on Asia. Jacqueline has spent 2 decades in the children's entertainment space and shares some of her experiences taking the minions to China, bringing the Wiggles to Canada and much much more.

Learn more about Jacqueline's company, Playology International: https://www.playologyintl.com/

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Qasim Virjee 0:29

Welcome back to another episode of the start, well podcast this time around, I'm joined in studio with Jacqueline Vaughn, who I've known for many, many years. And we're reconnecting today to talk all things content, licensing, games, merchandising, children's entertainment, we'll see where this conversation goes. There's a lot to talk about. But with that, I will welcome Jackie, Jack. Jack,

Jacqueline Vong 0:58

I hate Jackie.

Qasim Virjee 1:00

To all the Jackie's out there.

Jacqueline Vong 1:04

Enjoy your name, and it's just not me, you keep

Qasim Virjee 1:06

rocking your name. Hi, Q Hi, it is so nice to have you here. And to see your face after so long after many years as we've each fallen into family life perhaps?

Jacqueline Vong 1:17

Yes, it's been a it's been a while and I'm so happy to be back and feel like I'm back. You know, during COVID in a room with people, and a gorgeous place at start. Well, good job.

Qasim Virjee 1:31

Thank you. Thank you very much. This place has been a lot of work. But you know, it's a it's work that enables other people's work. And that's fulfilling to me. So I love it. Congratulations on all of that. Thank you. Lots of talk about for starters, catch me up, catch our audience up on what play ology Incorporated, is.

Jacqueline Vong 1:53

Okay, so for the last five years, folks, I have run a strategic consultancy in the youth entertainment and kids space, basically, merging the intersection of licensing, merchandise licensing and content marketing together. So what does that mean? Basically, we know that we're consuming content in different ways, and it's ever changing. And so we have set up ourselves to be thought leaders there and create your go to market strategy, from content initiation, to development, to creation into the merchandise licensing piece where you make actual toys and publishing and games and help you broker that huge gap and monetize it.

Qasim Virjee 2:40

Okay, so starting, let's talk about starting the foundation story as an entrepreneur of launching play ology, Inc. Wow, what's the like, what was the if there were if there was a context that you could paint for us of founding your own company, because I know that you work with some some great, you know, toy companies, people in this space, doing all sorts of things. And you can call those experiences out and then just tell me a little bit about like, how you went on your own kind of thing.

Jacqueline Vong 3:05

So I had the pleasure of starting my career with some of the greats and master course entertainment Nelvana and Mattel, where I managed Barbie, which you know, as a female growing up as a child Barbie was the mecca of where you are. And in the toy industry, Mattel being the number one toy company, Barbie was the place I wanted to be. So when I landed the job, I thought, Wow, that's amazing. But where do I go next? So I had the opportunity after Mattel to actually go to China, and live out my dream of managing the territory of the mainland and creating experiences for kids there. And when was that? What year was that? It was 2011. So I left Toronto to go to Hong Kong, and manage China from China but living in Hong Kong. So commuting an hour a day. And bringing in Western brands like Transformers Fisher Price, the minions and Peppa Pig. So I helped with the conversation and the storytelling of Peppa Pig to making it the

We sat down with the cofounder of Canada's leading publication focused on the emerging North American Cannabis industry. Jay from Business of Cannabis gives us a 101 on how the industry is structured whilst recounting fun anecdotes and an update about being acquired recently by Prohibition Partners from the UK.

Links:

StartWell Podcasts on the Web: https://magazine.startwell.co/magazine/podcasts/

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/startwell/id1391959054

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3mZuqf6L5g1fUJRTSttVQs

Business of Cannabis: https://businessofcannabis.com/

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Qasim Virjee 0:28

Welcome back to the StartWell podcast once again, I am Qasim and today I'm joined in studio by J. Rosenthal, Jay came to start well as a member used to record in this very studio that didn't sound or look as good for the business of cannabis. And that is the domain name on your T shirt.

Jay Rosenthal 0:51

Always be branding.

Qasim Virjee 0:52

I guess so. I wore the wrong thing today,

Jay Rosenthal 0:56

well get your shirt.

Qasim Virjee 0:59

No, I didn't mean that I didn't wear you, oh, man, I don't know wearing my shirt. You know, I could wear your shirt if you want.

Jay Rosenthal 1:04

I only have three shirts, they all say the same thing. And I just keep wearing

Qasim Virjee 1:07

J. I want to talk a little bit about how you came into the world of cannabis and your personal experiences with you know what you write about now? Business cannabis the intersect. And then I want to kind of explore what your lenses on the industry because so much has happened since you came to start well as a member a couple years ago, and things opened up legally. And I personally am totally in the dark about it. I'm sure a lot of my audiences. So I'd love to illuminate them. And first off, yes. Welcome back.

Jay Rosenthal 1:39

Thank you. These are a few of my favorite things to talk about myself. And we'd Excellent. See what? Let me talk about how I got to start? Well, first of all,

Qasim Virjee 1:49

I'd love to hear that because

Jay Rosenthal 1:51

I was looking for a place to record really worst versions of what we're doing right now. Yeah, where I would have people come in wanting to be around downtown. And at the time, there was this real trend of like all the cannabis CEOs coming through downtown Toronto on their, like their money show, basically, right? They were raising capital, raising capital going public talking to investors, base street meetings, right? Like, do 20 In one day, 22 days, I wanted to be in that stock so we could get them talking about cannabis. And it was great. And this was a great location to do that. And then they stopped coming because of COVID. That was part of it. And then we were fully remote. But it was the time and business of cannabis. And we were like if we could just do something nearly every day, right? We would just be filling a gap. And people are just hungry and thirsty for this information, both in the industry outside the industry looking in. And that's what we needed a space for. And this was like ideal we did events here to

Qasim Virjee 2:45

know tell me a little bit about the backdrop like career backdrop or otherwise interest backdrop, how did you get involved in kind of like documenting what's going on in this? You know, totally nascent at the time. I mean, even now, it's only been a couple years, right? So it's still very young. Yeah,

Jay Rosenthal 3:00

it's funny, I was just we were just in Las Vegas last week for the big trade show and cannabis. And some were saying like, what was your background that brought you to do this? And I

In this episode we hear from the founder of Toronto's Astrolab Studios - one of the most popular boutique studios for commercial film and photography located on the Revival Film Studios lot in the city's downtown neighbourhood of Leslieville.

Adam found his way into studio ownership from a previous career in Press Relations and has since begun developing is talents behind the decks as a house music DJ and behind the lens as a still photographer becoming commercially sought after for his work with professional athletes.

StartWell Podcasts on the Web: https://magazine.startwell.co/magazine/podcasts/

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/startwell/id1391959054

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3mZuqf6L5g1fUJRTSttVQs

Astrolab Studios: https://astrolab.studio

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Qasim Virjee 0:29

All right, welcome back to another episode of the start well, Podcast. I'm Qasim and this time in studio with my friend Adam wiener wiener whitener? Yeah, it's a German name. Yeah, you got it. That's it awesome.

Qasim Virjee 0:45

Adam is going to be telling us all sorts of magical stories about his wonderful life in creative stuff. And I'm excited to dig into all that his adventures yield in terms of inspiration for anyone considering paths, you know, in their career in, in the arts, in culture, in business, and all that together. So, welcome to the studio. Adam. Thank you very much. Thank you, Qasim for having me here. Of course, pleasure to have you here. Man. I don't know how magical the stories will be. But I'll I'll do my best to fill them with as much wimzie as I can. Absolutely. You know, I'm not gonna hold you against any particular measure of magic. My daughter is not in studio with us today. So she's not gonna be you know, expecting unicorns.

Qasim Virjee 1:30

Go for it. Perfect. Let's start with an introduction cake. Because I know you. We haven't known each other that long. But, but it's been really cool. Because my take on who you are is probably a limited slice of who you think you are? Of course. Sure. Yeah. So why don't why don't you tell our audience and tell me a little bit of a little bit of who the the Adam Vianna Yeah. You know, story, how that story unfolded? And brought you sure

Adam Weitner 1:57

Well, yeah, I'll start with just a quick who I am. So again, my name is Adam Whitener. And, you know, you might know me as the owner of a studio called astrolabe Studios, which is a studio. And this is how Qasim really knows me. You know, it's a studio setup to support Toronto's creative community, predominantly commercials, corporate videos,

Adam Weitner 2:21

music videos, sort of anything greater than visual, basically, that's sort of what we're set up to support. So we're a facility a space, you know, we've got like the white site coves and we've got lots of gear lighting, etc, etc, etc. So that's kind of how I'd say most how most people know me, because that's the business that I created the brand and I created astrolabe studios, right. That's what I'm really known for. But I'm also a photographer, and that's really been taking off for me. That's been something I would have called like, a side passion hobby thing for many, many years.

Qasim Virjee 3:04

We all felt like pros, right? Totally. Yeah, the power in your head.

Adam Weitner 3:07

Absolutely. And learning to shoot manual. You know, that was my first camera where I learned to shoot manual. Anyway. So I'm a photographer as well. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Sure. And then I'm also now this is just kind of funny to me. But I guess you could say, I'm technically a DJ, I've actually b

Celebrating 10 years in business, Len joins us to recount the foundation story of The Depanneur.

His self-described 'interesting place where food things happen' has become one of Toronto's most applauded places to find unique experiences for those who love food, community and adventure. The Dep is where anyone who wants to cook for people can find a kitchen and audience - something which is uniquely honest and refreshing in a city experiencing crazy inflation and gentrification.

A must-listen for anyone interested in food, social enterprise, bootstrapping and everything which makes Toronto diverse and amazing.

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Qasim Virjee 0:29

So welcome back to another episode of The Star Well, Podcast. I'm Qasim and this time in studio with my friend Len Sen, who I haven't seen for. I don't know how many years, it's been a few, quite a few. In a previous life, we were working on projects, maybe 15 years ago, getting clothes that were like that were like web projects for all sorts of clients that you had at your studio, called hypnotic. And one of the anecdotes that I remember recounting to someone, when I was telling them that you're coming in today was that as a designer, you made at that time, and it still sticks with me, some of the most interesting and, shall we say, involved to implement designs, for web interfaces. This is a time when, you know, CSS was fairly new. And, and some of the interfaces you made like our camp Erawan, right, the local kids camp summer camp. And you really remember, you really kind of wanted to relate the camp experience through the interface. And there was a very cool design for the backdrop for the background, and how it worked into the contextualize the content in that design. And I remember when we worked on that project, it was it stuck with me as something that more people should be thinking in that way. And I'm sure it's gonna, that that idea of contextualization of human experience is going to work into our discussion today. Anyway, welcome to the studio lens.

Len Senater 2:05

No, thank you very much. I mean, you know, in all fairness, I have to give credit to my business partner, Barry Martin, and our creative director at the time, Brian, how they were, that was that Erawan project, which was very, very beautiful. And I do think kind of ahead of its time really was their babies. So that wasn't a project that I had my fingers in too deeply. So I wouldn't want to take too much sure credit for that one. But yeah, I did have a tendency to I had my, you know, I had studied, I taught typography, and I had a sort of a real interest in design. And it was interesting as we got into web, you know, especially in the early days, it was, in some ways a step forward with interactivity. I had also been doing CD ROM development and other kinds of interactive multimedia stories.

Qasim Virjee 2:48

Take a step back there. Did you say cd rom development?

Len Senater 2:52

Oh, yeah. So I'll take a step away back, we can even we can come up to, to the CD ROM part. So yeah, originally, I studied commercial photography in Montreal. I was from Montreal originally. But I grew up here in Toronto. And then I lived in France briefly. And then I moved back to Montreal to keep my French from atrophying completely. Yeah, study, keep some original photography there. Back when it was on film. And then, towards the end of my studies, I got a demonstration of Photoshop one. And I was, you know, completely, completely smitten, I realized this is definitely where I wanted to go with that. And so I kind of dove in, I volunteered to work in a couple of places that had at that time, sort of high end back equipment, quadros, and stuff like that, and taught myself the early suite of tools as Photoshop before they had layers, even before they had multiple Anduze. So you had to get things right, and you had to understand how it all wo

For this episode, we had the pleasure of sitting down with the cofounders of Ascari - a Toronto based hospitality group that has evolved in the past decade+ from an experimental Izakaya into a portfolio of French/Italian restaurants, bar plus new retail concept.

Ascari cofounders Erik Joyal and John Sinopoli have been an innovative tour de force through the pandemic, managing not only to stay alive despite uncertainty but expanding their customer offering by focusing on what their team excels at.

*Recorded on October 8, 2021

[expand title="Podcast Transcript"]

Qasim Virjee 0:28

Welcome back to the start. Well podcast. For this episode, we're sitting down in studio at start well on King Street West with Eric oil, and Johnson opoli, from the scary Hospitality Group. So, okay, so you guys start, you know, your partnership, you meet each other. The chef joins the front man, you found a Japanese is a guy in a city that was still finding its culinary, you know, interests. You were early or ahead of the game. And then 50 staff, suddenly, you're a whirlwind of operations nightmare with that restaurant. And when it ends very quickly, you find something that's a bit of a kind of a slower pace that's more manageable. And, and you start having fun, maybe a little bit more. It's

Erik Joyal 1:19

always fun. It was always it was always fun. There were there's different degrees of stress. And there's different degrees of challenges, right, I think managing table 17 Still had its huge challenges, even though it was a smaller team, they were just different.

John Sinopoli 1:34

I don't know. Yeah, I agree. I think that wouldn't mean is that guy was open for three years and had a lot of success. In many ways. I think that couple of mistakes we made were maybe the size, the neighborhood things that first operators if and the experience we provided in like year one was very different from the experience we were providing by the end, but but that time, I think the whole might have been a bit deep and the traction wasn't wasn't there. But with table 17 The motivation was do what you know, right? And we knew the food experience you're gonna provide there, like it was a very European continental cuisine that was rooted in Italian and French. And an experience that Eric and I are both very familiar and comfortable with, not that we weren't familiar with is a chi experience. We were because you lived in Japan, I did live in Japan. And Eric was very familiar with a similar concept in England when he lived there. And I think that the challenge was, how could we communicate that experience, where people are going to believe us that this is this was what people said, it was a lot easier because of our backgrounds and our roots. And so like, people

Qasim Virjee 2:45

walk into an izakaya. And it's a white guy saying, oh, and they're like, What the hell is going on? We

John Sinopoli 2:53

didn't have course, you know, very strong Japanese team in the back of house and the front and the front as well, like we had in to be honest, at the time, too, there was a fraction of the Japanese immigrants in Toronto than there are now like, now, there's a whole community of young Japanese people who own restaurants and do do that, and bring their culture here at the time wasn't the case. So we, I remember came to us like the Yeah, like, there was like one little five page Japanese newspaper in Toronto, you know, and, and they had us featured a couple times, and that helped us get some great employees. But table 17 was a change in pace in a few ways. Like we went to a neighborhood Yeah, we're making personal relationships, we relationships and connections with our clientele. Those were lasting relationships, very different from the St. Lawrence Market neighborhood experience, which was more touristy, more like, you know, daytime people and then they would leave and go home and there was a few

Welcome to Toronto’s Old Town neighbourhood near the St Lawrence Market – an area with roots dating back to 1793 when this city of now 3 million people was founded.

With bike lanes, historic parks and plenty of boutiques, cafes and bars you’d normally find throngs of tourists and office workers strolling along sidewalks but its mid April and a month since the city started reacting to the Corona Virus Pandemic.

Here on Lombard street we caught up with Sameer Mohammed outside the first of his three Fahrenheit Coffee locations. Much loved by his many regulars who usually pop in on their way to work as well as through the day, Fahrenheit has been voted Best Specialty Coffee House many times over since its foundation in 2012.

Just a month into Toronto’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Sameer has had to close his newest location, and in order to keep the other two open he’s had to reduce staff headcount, added to the takeout menu plus stepped in to work behind the counter.

For our inaugural episode we sat down with Dr Sheila Lakhoo – a family doctor who leads the Telemedicine Impact Plus clinic at St Michael’s Hospital. Recently she has also been the Medical Director at Union Health (a new clinic owned by Telus Health utilizing their own telemedicine app called Akira) and practices lifestyle medicine at One80Health – an integrative clinic in Yorkville.

Her take on the current situation:

OHIP Billing codes now covering telemedicine through 3rd party apps (like Telus/Union Health’s Akira app)

Physicians across Ontario are using a multitude of video conferencing software options (including Facetime, Skype and Zoom) to offer care because of the restriction lifted on HIPAA compliance with this pandemic

Until this pandemic the Ontario Telemedicine Network (provided by the publicly funded provincial healthcare system) was the primary means of conducting virtual consults and was mainly used for complex cases which may involve remote patients who didn’t have direct access to doctors in person

Most doctors across the province may not have every used telemedicine at all leading up to this pandemic

A lot of the online consults she is conducting include education about Covid and symptomatic diagnosis as well as how people can stay healthy whilst isolating

Vision for the near future:

If not a single platform emerging as ‘the best’ virtual care app, some form of unification of options may come in a new standard being developed and enforced at a platform layer

Better tools will emerge to save time and make processes easier for doctors using artificial intelligence and systems integrations – for example, automatic transcriptions of patient charting with virtual care (telephone and video conferencing) built into Electronic Medical Records systems

Some walk-in clinics may not be able to re-open post-pandemic

A large number of Ontarians who may not have regular doctors (typically who use walk-in clinics) may shift to primarily using Virtual care as their main interface with doctors

Doctors may choose to work online instead of in person where its more lucrative and efficient for their schedules