When I was hired, I was tasked with bringing machine learning technology into Swift’s medical device. One of challenges was to use machine learning to isolate and identify wounds from images taken under diverse imaging conditions. It was a very interesting problem at the time as nothing like this had ever been done on a large scale or beyond very controlled lab settings. With 15+ years of academic research experience, most recently working with Graham Taylor, the Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and one of the brightest researchers in Deep Learning, I was confident to take up this challenge.
One of the main reasons I joined Swift as a Senior Machine Learning Scientist was the impact that I get to make. I have gone to wound care clinics and seen how people with chronic wounds are suffering and how our product has made a tremendous impact in improving their recovery time, so I feel good knowing that I’m doing something that is making a difference in people’s lives.
I’ve always been passionate about coding. During my master’s degree, I co-founded a company called Consult Conduit that facilitated e-consultations between doctors via iOS and Android apps. Now at Swift Medical as a Full-Stack Web Developer, I primarily work on a front-end web dashboard that allows clinicians to track all wounds within their facility. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have because it directly helps nurses save time and money.
I didn’t have much web development experience when I first started, but now I’ve got exposure to all kinds of tools: React, Ruby on Rails, Node. It helps that everyone who works here is willing to share their knowledge with one another. You can ask anybody for help and they’ll stop whatever they’re doing to assist you.
Our healthcare system can be very messy. Not only is there a lack of transparency but patients are expected to remember all the different specialists they’re seeing, what medications they’re on and what their allergies are. My mom suffered from a chronic disease many years ago and I understand what that pressure feels like. Patients shouldn’t feel like they’re being thrown into the unknown.
I joined Swift as a Product Manager because I wanted to put more power in the patients’ hands. Even though they’re relying on doctors, they should be given more control over their own autonomy. With our app, we’re able to provide them with more immediate, informed care while reducing the discomfort they’re already facing. There’s no other company doing what we’re doing.
I studied computer science and engineering in school but ended up working in quantitative trading for 10 years. Towards the end I was so miserable. I wanted to go back to doing computer vision but I was nervous about making a career change at the age of 42.
Luckily I found Swift Medical. They were a young company doing innovative things to help people, and it just so happened they were looking for someone with a background in computer vision. Despite being out of the industry for so long, they took a chance on me and hired me. I’m so grateful they did because I love the work I do now as a Biomedical Imaging Specialist. I’m obsessed with tweaking algorithms that will make our 3D reconstructions more robust. I’m constantly thinking about problems I need to solve even when I’m not in the office.
When I was in the first grade, my mom was diagnosed with leukemia. I remember helping her out when she went through chemotherapy and it made me want to grow up and make a difference in the lives of patients.
I’ve worked as a registered nurse in the U.S. for over 10 years. As the Vice President of Clinical Operations at Swift, I work closely with the product and marketing team to ensure our software makes sense to the nurses from a clinical standpoint. Is the workflow correct? Is it within regulation? Is the documentation accurate? Is the terminology correct? It’s a great job because I get to use my clinical knowledge and work with all kinds of people, from data scientists to DevOps engineers to marketers.
The problem with wound care is that it’s so fragmented; the standards of care in one place might not be the same in another place. Hopefully the work that I’m doing will ensure there’s better wound care across the world.
