Bryce Pickard is the new incoming executive director of the Digital Health and Discovery Platform (DHDP) effective March 15. He is the former managing director and COO of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet), based at Western University in London, Ontario.
“I am truly honoured to be joining the Terry Fox Research Institute and the Digital Health and Discovery Platform group. For me, the name Terry Fox is synonymous with hard work, perseverance and the belief that each one of us can make a difference,” says Pickard. “The DHDP will maintain these values and principles while continuing Terry’s legacy by bringing together the best minds in precision medicine and artificial intelligence with the goal of delivering the best possible treatments to cancer patients.”
Pickard is a respected leader in the health care/life sciences sector with oversight for the past five years of CANet’s operations, Network staff and over 100-plus clinical and non-clinical teams located in major cities and health centres across Canada. During this period, $80-million in cash and in-kind funding was secured and the network’s first digital health platform was conceptualized and implemented.
A passionate builder and leader of cross-functional teams, Pickard has held progressive leadership roles with not-for-profit organizations with a track record of executing vision with effectiveness, efficiency and overall excellence.
At CANet he led the development and deployment of VIRTUES, a virtual care platform now used in three provinces and one of the only platforms of its kind to host identified patient data in a cloud infrastructure. Delivering the platform required buy-in and alignment across numerous environments and between diverse stakeholders, says Pickard.
He has extensive experience in business planning, operations, contracts, intellectual property, and commercialization, as well as in health data and health data initiatives and looks forward to the application of this experience within the DHDP.
“Combining contextual clinical data with the latest in data science technologies will accelerate medical breakthroughs, improve outcomes for patients, and deliver a more efficient and accessible health care system,” remarks Pickard.
Pickard obtained his Master of Science, Doctor of Philosophy (Physiology) and Master of Business Administration degrees from Western University in London, Ontario and the Richard Ivey School of Business. He held previous positions at Western University as manager, director and executive director of research (2012-2015), and was a Faculty member at the University of Waterloo.
Pickard also shares Terry Fox’s dream of a world without cancer, valuing strong, character-driven leadership. He and his family are avid Terry Foxers and supporters of The Terry Fox Foundation, having participated in the annual Terry Fox Run as a team since 2007 in memory of their Grandpa James who passed away from metastatic sarcoma.
Read Bryce's first-hand account of his family’s long involvement in the Terry Fox Run.