Vanguard Magazine

www.vanguardcanada.com FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016 41 See the full interview online George Carpenter has been chief execu- tive and president of Mynd Analytics Inc. since 2009. Prior to that, he was president and CEO of WorkWell Systems Inc., a na- tional physical medicine firm that manages occupational health programs for Fortune 500 firms. George was also chairman and CEO of Core Inc., a firm focused on in- tegrated disability management and work- force analytics. Q How did you start out in this industry and how has it brought you to where you are today? I've run health data companies for most of my career. The first was my small division of a large multinational, Baxter, which was slated to be closed or sold. We were afraid to tell our spouses that we'd all be losing our jobs, so I led a management buyout and we got to see what it's like when "the inmates run the asylum." We turned our money losing business into a market leader, went on the NAS- DAQ, and after 10 years sold to a large insurance company for 100 times what we paid Baxter. Never telling our wives? Priceless. Q What was your worst moment? Best moment: our technology produced an extraordinary reduction in suicidality at two of the US military's leading hospitals. Worst moment: two days later, after submitting the results for publication, the military stopped the trial for undisclosed reasons. A significant safety finding in the military remains unpublished. Q What was your "aha" moment? When I realized that we could publish all of our data to the cloud, like Google, sharing with researchers and physicians alike while still protecting our intellectual property. We're now the largest clinical registry in mental health. Q Step back and analyze your journey. What is the takeaway for our readers here? I've always been attracted to lifelong learning, especially in disciplines that challenge traditional beliefs. And I view learning not as a homework or a chore, but well, an act of self…improvement. Q What is the one thing that gets you most fired up today? We've just opened our own testing facil- ity – the Mynd Analytics Centre – and the Center broke even in its first month. Q How is your organization changing the game within your industry? We predict medication response for men- tal health based on quantitative EEG. Our patented product, PEER, is a prac- tical machine learning, cloud application driven by a proprietary clinical outcome of over 10,000 unique patients. It's deliv- ered as a test (EEG) and a report (PEER) to physicians around the world. Q How has innovation become ingrained in your company's culture? Every member of the MYND team see themselves as part of a learning machine, and we get to see the outcomes on pa- tients every day…continuous improve- ment is in our DNA. Q What technologies and trends will drive the biggest changes in your indus- try over the next two years? Artificial intelligence, the next generation of machine learning, will create unique opportunities but also challenge every business. We higher primates aren't very good at exponential change, so buckle up. Q What habit contributes to your success? One of my habits has been always seeing the glass as half-full, all the time. I can't help it. Many entrepreneurs I've met are pathologically positive, so I've begun to look at cheerfulness in the face of adver- sity as a superpower. Q What was the best advice you received? A board member ran a multibillion dollar company that forever changed medicine. He told me that the easy part was coming up with the breakthrough science or inno- vation. The hardest part is getting people to actually adopt the change that they've been asking for. Q What person or organization do you believe best embodies the innova- tion mindset? General Electric and Honda, both early customers of mine and both dedicated to Six Sigma. They taught me what a continu- ous improvement culture really means. Q Any parting advice? There is nothing more fun than doing something meaningful with your life and doing something that you love. The pow- erful resistance we often face just reminds us of the stakes we're playing for. GeorGe C. Carpenter iV PRESIDENT & CEO MYnd AnAlYtiCs inC

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