Claudia Krywiak:

Across Canada, millions of caregivers quietly keep our health care system running right now. 1 in 4 Canadians is a caregiver, supporting aging parents, partners, or other loved ones, often without pay on top of their existing job and family life. It’s meaningful work, but it comes at a cost. Caregivers are experiencing stress, anxiety, exhaustion, and financial strain, all as a direct result of their caregiving. And meanwhile, most Canadians around 90% of adults over 45 want to age at home. But the system isn’t built to meet that demand. In a 2024 report from the Canadian Center for Caregiving Excellence, senior caregivers said improved access to home care was the most important support. Yet over half reported struggling to hire providers, find information or access affordable local services. That’s why innovators are reimagining home care, making it more responsive, more connected and more centered on both patients and caregivers. Welcome to Where Next Happens. I’m Doctor Claudia Krywiak, President and CEO of the Ontario Centre of Innovation. Chenny Xia is the CEO and co-founder of Gotcare, a technology enabled home care platform that connects people needing support with qualified personal support workers. A serial entrepreneur and passionate advocate for women in tech, she has led multiple ventures at the intersection of health, community, care and innovation. Chenny has been recognized by SHEO, received National Start-Up Funding Awards, and was named one of Canada’s Next 36 leaders at Gotcare. She is reshaping how home care is delivered, putting patients and care workers at the center of the system. Chenny, it’s great to have you with us. Let’s start at the beginning. We love a good origin story. So what inspired you to start Gotcare?

Chenny Xia:

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Claudia. We’re really proud to be a OCI funded venture. So really grateful to be here today with you. I co-founded Gotcare with my co-founder, Carol McDonald, who’s an occupational therapist by background. And, her and I, we always felt that there was a better way to approach home care, and that one that truly came from a person centered approach where we provided the person who was receiving care a lot more ability to sort of have a say in terms of who’s coming in the home when they’re coming in the home, what types of services they might need, what types of expenses associated with their home care they might want to submit as well. Really just sort of empowering folks to have a bit more say and be in a bit more of a in a driver’s seat when it came to their home care experience. So, yeah, we we built exactly that.

Claudia Krywiak:

And your experience as an entrepreneur and also as a caregiver, did that shape the vision for the company?

Chenny Xia:

Absolutely. You know, I would say that as a first generation, newcomer myself, immigrant myself, I think that a lot of our home care system is staffed by newcomers and new immigrants. So, and particularly women, largely 94% women or something like that. So definitely it’s definitely, Has a personal piece of my heart as well.

Claudia Krywiak:

So from your perspective, what are the biggest gaps in home care today and why is this such a big problem for both caregivers and families in Ontario?

Chenny Xia:

I mean, I think it’s fundamentally an issue of supply and demand, right? So on the demand side, with the aging population rise and mental health needs and rise and chronic conditions. Generally speaking, there’s just more and more need for services. Yet on the supply side we we are facing, you know, pretty, strict budget limitations, right? For example, generally speaking, in Canada, provinces don’t like to spend more than 40% of their budget on healthcare. And what here in Ontario where like 40 to 43% right now. So we’re we’re all asked to effectively serve more people with the same amount of resources or less. And then on top of that, you add inflationary pressures and labor challenges. So yeah, servicing an increased demand right now is is definitely a huge challenge for all provinces across the board right now.

Claudia Krywiak:

So for listeners who haven’t heard of Gotcare before, can you kind of walk us through how does God care work? What is the technology and how do you work with both caregivers and with the people that are seeking their services?

Chenny Xia:

For sure. So really briefly, we essentially our customers are those who fund care. So we work with various different departments. We also work with hospitals and then on the sort of private side, we work with insurers as well as, you know, places like workers compensation boards and things like that too. Really what we do is we we sort of take, apologizes a little technical, but we sort of take the assessment in terms of what the patient or claimant has been assessed to. Be approved for from a total services or budgetary standpoint. And we essentially create what we call a digital care wallet. Once that digital care wallet is created, we provide the the the person who’s receiving care access to that wallet, and they can effectively use that to schedule their own services, to upload expenses, to essentially treat it like a, you know, like a health spending account, right, so to speak. and so that really just provides the person receiving care a lot more, as I mentioned, control and immediate access to to their benefit. and then essentially we also provide the ability to support claimants or patients in connecting to the right service provider. So we have a matching algorithm and a matching process where we have a care manager who can match that patient or claimant to appropriate service provider in their region you can help set up their care plan and things like that too. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we’re, we’re supporting that patient or claimant in, effectively self-managing or, sort of, self-determining, what is best for them and we just reconcile what the budgets look like at the end of every month, and we send that reporting and that, to the care funders.

Claudia Krywiak:

That’s really powerful because that that’s something that, many people who go through our health care system don’t necessarily feel that self of sense of empowerment in terms of being able to, take control of their care and how and when they receive that care. So can you give us a sense of so how many service providers, caregivers and how many kind of patients claimants do you currently have on the platform, and are you in the market?

Chenny Xia:

Yeah. So across the country we have about 30,000 service providers, who’ve been registered and screened on our network. And I think to date now we’ve served over, gosh, almost 10,000 families.

Claudia Krywiak:

Oh, wow. So you really are in scale up mode. Can you talk about how you were able to to get people onto your platform and deploy across Canada, not just in Ontario.

Chenny Xia:

For sure. On the service provider side, we’re really proud to provide the majority of our care workers with an enhanced wage. And there’s a few reasons why we can do that. One is that, you know, there’s just a lot less, let’s call it operational overhead in terms of how our platform sort of manages and supports care because largely claimants or patients are self scheduling their services and things like that. You know, those are costs that we don’t have to bear on our side. So we can sort of redirect some of those savings operationally to paying service providers a little bit more. And I would say that, you know, particularly in home care where often service providers are just making a few bucks above minimum wage. You know, that little bit of extra pay does go a long way and is definitely a, a very strong way for us to attract appropriate candidates and then also on the, the patient side, in terms of how we’ve been growing our business, our go to market strategy has actually been to start with the rural communities. So when we first started, we we went to a lot of the care funders that we knew and we said, hey, we know in rural communities it’s really tough right now, right? Like it’s tough everywhere, but it’s especially tough in rural communities and essentially for a care funder, the the just the sheer amount of money that they’re spending per sort of. Claim or per patient in those rural communities are, are on average a lot higher than urban communities. So we you know, I think that in those communities there was a lot more openness to trying something new. I think that any sort of technology enabled care, and rightfully so many are can be skeptical about that. So it’s sort of like a demonstrate your value in a desperate situation where there isn’t another option, because in many rural communities, it was like it was either Gotcare or no care. Like that was the comparison. And that was how we sort of were able to get some buy in to at least see what that experience would look like. And then through that process, build trust with our with our with our customers who are, again, these funders of care and expand to suburban and urban communities. We had to start. It was all rural.

Claudia Krywiak:

Very interesting. And what about the funders of the care, because you were dealing with Ontario’s and the Canadian health care system. So I would hazard to guess these are procurements. And what is it like for a startup to undertake the procurement process in our health care system?

Chenny Xia:

I would say on the private side. So, you know, insurer versus the public side, like the public purse, it’s a very different process. On the insurer side, it’s really about working through the vendor manager protocol. And so sometimes that’s a procured experience. Sometimes it’s just about qualifying for that vendor list. And it just looks a little bit different for different types of claims. Nonetheless it’s it’s it’s one style of procurement versus the other. Whereas definitely on the public procurement side it’s definitely a little bit more lengthy and challenging. Let’s say that for sure. But but I think that the way we’ve always approached our business is we actually started, serving the, the private sector. So we started in insurance and we operated in an insurance only context for about six years, and then only after that. And really only, you know, really only in the last year and a half, effectively have we really started looking at what, how can we service the public sector. And fundamentally, it’s because I think just to even be able to survive these procurement cycles, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of cash. So unless you have a steady business to kind of keep the lights on and to keep growth going, it’s very challenging for a small business, to participate in the, in the public context.

Claudia Krywiak:

So it’s perseverance, but it’s also cashflow as well. That’s tough for a lot of startups the latter, especially in this space. Any words of advice?

Chenny Xia:

Yeah. I mean I, I it’s it’s funny, I like to say that any entrepreneur who chooses health care in Canada is a bit of a masochist. The unfortunate reality, Claudia, is that many of our startups end up going to the US. Right. For both lending and customers, that’s the unfortunate reality. I think the reason why Gotcare is being able to stay in Canada is largely I’m really lucky in that my co-founders both had had deep insurance experience prior to us starting the company. So we were sort of, you know, able to hit the ground running, so to speak, when we opened the doors, because we already had that sort of understanding of the insurer market. If we didn’t, I’m sure we would have followed the footsteps of others that end up migrating to the US. So yeah, it’s it’s definitely challenging. I think that this is where being able to really serve a very high context niche need with our care funders has served us really well.  But it’s not a it’s not a walk in the park for sure in Canada.

Claudia Krywiak:

Is there anything like that could help, types of supports at that stage for, for for startups to help them either navigate that process and or to help ensure that they kind of stay and grow here rather than, than leaving.

Chenny Xia: 

I mean, I think that OCI is a great example of an organization that supports startups in this context. you know, we wouldn’t have been able to expand across the country in the way that we did if it weren’t for your organization support. So that’s a you know, you yourself is a great example of that and I think we’re lucky in the Canadian ecosystem and that we have a few other organizations who fall into this category. Right. So whether it’s, OBIO or Age-Well, or CAN Health or, you know, others. we do have a few organizations that are set up to start to help startups, especially in an early stage context. I think, though, where we really lose startups is sort of in that mid stage, right? So once they sort of get to that seed post seed series, a stage, that’s where sort of the optionality for support starts to to dwindle a little bit  you know, I think we have a, a lot in the beginning, but not a lot in the middle. And you know, I think that’s a definitely an opportunity for there to be a bit more programming and support in that. In that way.

Claudia Krywiak:

The support that you received through OCI was through Ontario’s Life Sciences Innovation Fund or LSIF. And that was a pre-seed seed stage investment where other investors participated as well. Can you talk a little bit about fundraising and kind of specifically in this space, and what investors are looking for and what made you attractive to investors?

Chenny Xia: 

I mean, I will say raising money now is very different than when we when we raised our last round, with yours truly, which was, gosh, about two, two and a half years ago or so. And I think that the funding landscape is one that is constantly dynamic. So I always encourage, founders to talk to founders who are currently raising to get the best understanding of what is happening right now. But what I will say in terms of advice that I received, and that has worked well with me throughout my, my, throughout the different fundraising rounds that we’ve had, is that ultimately just a reminder that the timeline, from the point you first meet an investor to the time that they write a check is typically like minimum a year, year and a half, sometimes two years, sometimes three years. You know, these it’s very rare. Very, very rare. especially at the sort of seed and beyond series A and on round in Canada at least, it’s very rare to find an investor where that cheque would be written. And you know, your it’s your first time meeting them and you’re like four months in, right? So definitely building those relationships while you’re not actively raising is the best strategy to really build that trust, help them build that understanding of your company over time, as opposed to sort of waiting for you to, you know, for you to actually announce the round, to start trying to build those relationships. I think that’s that’s a common mistake that perhaps some earlier founders make work those relationships and make those relationships easier. And yeah, and I the other thing I would say as well is I think that it’s really important to stay really grounded and really rooted in what is it that you’re doing, why it matters, and why your team is the right team to approach this during the process. Because you’re going to get no’s. You’re going to get maybes you know, it’s a lot of people poking and prodding your business. And I think that, to, to really ensure that, you achieve the best outcome, it’s sort of, you know, standing tall like an oak tree and, and whatever practices you need personally to, to manage that and maintain that is also really important.

Claudia Krywiak:  

And so, yes, the, the landscape for investment has changed. And I really like your description. It is fluid. And those relationships need to be built right from the outset. But speaking of of challenges, what would you say were some of the biggest challenges you faced in either starting up, Gotcare or scaling Gotcare?

Chenny Xia: 

I think the biggest challenge is that we’re still learning right now is just the navigation of procurement in healthcare specifically, right? Like I’m talking like it’s like, what are you going to do when you get like 250 page, 300 page contracts? It’s a that’s a whole business in and of itself, you know, and it’s taken us a long time to really learn. And we’re still learning. It’s like a continuous journey of learning how to navigate procurement. And it’s challenging because it’s like, learn by doing process. There’s no like manual or handbook out there, because it’s also dynamic in changing. Right? Like what is being procured is changing. So definitely a learning by doing process. And definitely in terms of accessing capital, there’s only so many investors in a Canadian context that, yeah, you, you really have to really look at what are your American options and even European options, as well.

Claudia Krywiak:  

Did you face any challenges that were specific to being a woman entrepreneur, whether it was in fundraising or in or in other areas?

Chenny Xia: 

You know, it’s really interesting when I get whenever someone asked me this question because whenever I’m in a situation where I feel like I’m not being respected or the communication is just not flowing, I kind of just I don’t force it. I just leave the room like I’m like, I’m good. I don’t need to be here. So I like honestly there. Yeah. You know, there are definitely situations where you may be disadvantaged as a female entrepreneur, but I just don’t participate. There’s so many others that you can work with where that is not an issue at all that. Yeah, I just don’t think it’s even worth your oxygen.

Claudia Krywiak:  

That’s a great response. Flipping it to make it on your own terms. I’m good. I don’t need to participate. Speaking of impact, what difference have you seen Gotcare kind of make so far for whether it’s families or caregivers or patients or for the system overall?

Chenny Xia:   

Yeah. I mean, ultimately our core focus is to really make it easier for families, to be able to access care and as to really shorten the time that it will take them to access care. Because when you need care, nobody will act faster than yourself, your yourself. Yours truly. Right. So so yeah, that that definitely speed to care and time to care is definitely the the key impact there as well as the just the ability for people to feel like that. They have the ability to actually personalize that care so they’re able to pick and choose what matters most to them. What type of goals are most important to them? What types of services are most meaningful for them, even breaking it down in terms of, you know, what would I prefer to know to how do I prefer to be supported by a service provider versus by a loved one? And being able to yourself make that choice, I think, really humanizes the experience of home care. Because, let’s be honest, a lot of people who, when it comes to receiving home care, there can be a little bit of resistance because it’s sort of almost felt. You feel like you’re losing a sense of independence, right? But really, I think that if we change how we approach home care, we can help our patients and claim and see it as a way of extending their independence as opposed to a loss of independence. but it’s really that approach that really matters. And yeah, on the service provider side, being on our platform and working through that just means that you’re able to have a more direct and more meaningful relationship with the person you’re caring for. Our service providers, they typically live very close to the patients that they serve. they can speak the same language. There are some, you know, shared cultural understanding. So that’s also really meaningful for them. And then for our system partners and collaborators, I think ultimately, you know, the best. Let me put this. The best compliment I ever got was when we were meeting with someone at the systems level and they were saying, oh, I’m so glad to be in this meeting today with you. This is like my favorite meeting of the day, you know? And I’m really proud about that because I think ultimately, what I hope that we represent is just an alternative way forward, hope for a different possible future. And. Yeah. And just really, really bringing out the ability for our partners to think creatively, to really work in a co-creative context, co-design context, I think has been, really powerful for our partners as well. But yeah, like ultimately, it’s it’s really just about how do people feel when they’re receiving those services? And also how do our partners feel when they’re collaborating with us to design the workflow for those services as well?

Claudia Krywiak: 

You talk about co-development and co co-design, whether you’re working with the insurers, the private funders or or the or the public funders, is this something that you’re used to? Is or is are you kind of setting new ground in terms of how vendors and, and the organizations that work with those vendors work together on procurements?

Chenny Xia:  

Yeah, I think that co-design is definitely becoming more and more common. It’s really the degree of co-design that we take. Right. And really, for us, it means having our patients and service providers be a part of that design process, making it feel like they that this is designed by them, for them is always really important to us. The nice thing about taking that type of approach is that it makes adoption a lot easier on the other side. So ultimately, it’s, you know, that we definitely see a lot of openness to this approach, especially in health. I think there isn’t there isn’t a lot of friction on it. It’s just a matter of being able to identify the right users, to be able to participate, to figure out what the ethics of that looks like, the privacy of that looks like, you know, some governance around that. But yeah, generally speaking, we don’t get a lot of pushback on it at all.

Claudia Krywiak: 

And in terms of the health care sector overall and innovation in the health care sector, and disruption both positive and in the negative sense as well.One of the areas which is being discussed a lot is the potential for AI to actually have a very big impact in the health care sector. So does that play into Gotcare’s technology and in general, how do you see the role of AI in our healthcare system going forward?

Chenny Xia:   

Yeah, AI is definitely something that we incorporate into our business when appropriate and are actively, continually monitoring and exploring. I think that at this current juncture, at the current moment in time, for us, because we largely work with older adults and people living with disabilities, having AI tools and sort of, you know, chat bots, etc., that they engage with themselves is not exactly appropriate for our use case. But what we do often use AI for is for operational optimization and automation. So, for example, AI is really great when we’re looking to match a patient with a service provider. AI is really great when we look at all of the various different data inputs coming in, whether it’s through, you know, some home monitoring devices that we’ve installed or through service provider provided outputs or patient outputs all of that can be filtered through an AI model as well to help our team monitor that data. So all of that sort of process and operational optimization in an AI context. I think that’s really smart. Makes sense. helps you do things faster and in a more efficient manner. But at this point, in terms of actually having patient, or even service provider tools, I think we want to wait a little bit, a little bit longer, before we, we, deploy anything in that context, but absolutely. And then, of course, within our teams as well, I think AI agents in sort of a, as a team member to augment and to improve employee output and throughput is also a great opportunity as well. You know, whether it’s from a customer success standpoint or an engineering standpoint, there’s a lot of great ways that AI can be adopted in that way within the team. But yeah, definitely more limited from a from a direct to patient standpoint right now.

Claudia Krywiak: 

But it’s interesting the way you describe it, though, because it really is essentially a very kind of human centric approach that you’re describing, that you’re leveraging these tools where where appropriate. But at the end of the day, you’re looking at the needs of your, of your patients and of the people that are using the platform. And and it is a very kind of personal, human centric approach that Gotcare is taking. What’s next for Gotcare? You’re expanding across Canada. What is the vision over the next three years? Are you looking expanding internationally? And just in terms of where you see the platform going from here?

Chenny Xia: 

Yeah for sure. I think that, you know, there’s sort of two fronts, where we’re really pushing the agenda. One is actually in, with our service provider network. So we’ve been sort of quietly upskilling and tooling our service providers, to role that we call health ambassadors. And this is a really, really exciting development for us because it’s also sort of core to, to sort of our, our mission as a company as well, kind of going back to the beginning of this, this recording. We have a training program here at Gotcare where we effectively, upskill service providers in our network who are, you know, again, typically PSWs, RPNs,  ESWs, CSWs, a lot of unregulated health professionals in home care. We have a program where we upskill them to support older adults and people living with disabilities with things like digital digital literacy, with things like health monitoring, home installations, with things like learning how to order your groceries on your phone so that in the winter you’re reducing your visit, your the how many times you’re leaving your home to prevent slips and falls. Like so it’s a lot of, like a kind of like a little bit like rent a granddaughter. 

Claudia Krywiak:

I love it. 

Chenny Xia: 

But, but but definitely sort of bridging that digital health literacy gap, for sure. And providing that coaching and sort of mentorship and support in that regard is really, I think, a role that our unregulated workers across Canada and internationally as well can fill as a way of sort of because if we can make the home a more connected experience and to help our patients and claimants be a little bit more connected digitally as well to services, it means that we can start to really meaningfully look at how we can make home care a little bit more interoperable with primary care, with acute care.  Like, I think that just by by enabling that within the home environment and the home setting and that the home is the hub of that activity has has a tremendous amount of potential for our system. So definitely empowering our our workers to be able to play that role. For example, one of the other things that we have them, we teach them as well is how to work with and in a multidisciplinary context. So for example, in a rural setting, you might have a patient who’s struggling to access, let’s call it occupational therapy or physiotherapy sessions because, you know, or that that professional and specialist only comes to that community, let’s say, for one day every three weeks. So we can actually enable a virtual visit where you have a health ambassador who’s in the home, working with a virtual clinician, potentially in an urban setting, even. And essentially that health ambassador is the eyes, ears, hands, boots on the ground. They can help with basic assessments, basic environmental scans. They can also help with coaching and mentoring and supporting patients in the home that way too. So yeah, so definitely a lot of potential in terms of how we see we can sort of have unregulated workers and clinicians working together and a more meaningful team based context, and definitely a lot more as well on the patient empowerment side in terms of how they can be a bit more connected as well. And yeah, absolutely. To your point, you know, beyond Canada International, sort of that international expansion of our programming is on the radar too.

Claudia Krywiak:

That’s awesome. That really is amazing because you’re not simply providing a technology platform that connects caregivers with patients. What you’re doing is actually building capacity and expanding capacity, not only in caregivers and in patients, but in the health care system overall. Thank you so much for taking the time to to chat with us today. It’s an amazing story and you’re having tremendous impact, and it is our pleasure to be able to support and privilege to be able to support you, along that journey. Thank you so much, Chenny, for sitting down with us today to talk.

Chenny Xia:  

Thanks, Claudia. Thanks for having me.

Claudia Krywiak:

That’s it for this episode of Where Next Happens. To learn more about Chenny’s work and Gotcare, visit Gotcare.ca. Thank you for joining us this season. As we spoke to the entrepreneurs and the innovators that were having an impact in Ontario, across Canada and globally, Where Next Happens is produced by the Ontario Centre of Innovation. This episode was produced by Jasmine Rach, edited by Gaetan Harris. Amanda Cupido is the executive producer and I’m your host, Doctor Claudia Krywiak. Ready to take your idea to the next level? The Ontario Centre of Innovation helps innovators access the funding, mentorship and resources they need to drive the future forward. Visit oc-innovation.ca/podcast to learn more.