The Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub is proud to welcome students from the Technology Entrepreneurship & Innovation (MTEI) program at St. Mary’s University. Learn more about Shamsher Pratap Singh Sandhu, who believes that Nova Scotia Health’s Innovation Hub is building the kind of invaluable relationships that will transform the access to and quality of care for Nova Scotians.
Tell us a bit about yourself:
A medical writer by profession, I have been fortunate to work on projects that helped pharma giants and healthcare professionals make wise decisions on policy, reimbursement, and economic evaluations.
A clean freak by nature, I take immense interest in home making, languages, and in finding out creative ways to spiritual awakening.
Who or what inspires you? Why do you love what you do?
Overcoming my own negative experiences and embracing them! This also helps me see the inequality in the world from a very nuanced perspective.
I draw learning from attitudes from all around — at work and elsewhere; positive attitudes strengthen my belief in what I have always believed while the negative ones make me question, dissect and value something that I have not yet unraveled. To be growing up on daily basis — finding inner peace, learning new coping mechanisms, and understanding others’ perspective — is a lovely experience.
What attracted you to apply to the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub?
Its breadth. It’s a fairly large health system undergoing enormous transformation, which brings along with it many challenging opportunities, unforeseen problems, and ambitions. This has provided me with an opportunity to advance my existing skills, and to marry this experience with what I want to do in near future — patient-centered research.
What have you learned since working with the innovation team?
Fostering new ideas, technologies, and innovations that help health systems advance in a long term, are the ultimate goals of innovation team. I learned to validate the considerations in projects, to provide clarity when subject matter expertise is needed and to help quickly identify the gaps that are important to understanding the adoption of innovation or technology. These eight months have been of immense profit.
How has this changed or reinforced what you want to do after you graduate?
Patient-centered research is my immediate goal. As much as the science behind drug development supports this kind of research, decision making at a leadership level is equally crucial. Although slightly different from core clinical research, the experience from the innovation hub will help me identify and develop strategies that push decision makers (physicians, governments, patients themselves) to overcome obstacles in using new medicinal products in the real world.
What do you think the future of innovation at Nova Scotia Health looks like?
The Innovation Hub is striving to turn ideas into scalable, de-risked, and effective solutions. I also think that it is through building invaluable relationships, attracting investment and external resources, which will transform the access to and quality of care for Nova Scotians and beyond. Certainly, it is ushering a change that will have a positive impact on patients’ lives.
