About the Invention

TechKnowledge is a company in Nova Scotia that has developed one of the world's best and biggest systems for instantly transmitting healthcare services such as medical data, video and audio over high-speed telephone wires.

Linda Weaver co-founded TechKnowledge in 1993 with her partner, Dorothy Spense. The two women met when they were both studying engineering at The Technical University of Nova Scotia (now known as Dal Tech). Linda studied electrical engineering and Dorothy studied mechanical engineering. They later received their EMBA degrees at St. Mary's.

TechKnowledge is a company in the Telemedicine or Telehealth business. Telemedicine offers on-line medical care, described as "technology for moving information, rather than the physician or the patient."

Many people who need health care live in rural areas and are far away from doctors, hospitals and specialists. This is true in Canada, which has a vast geography and communities that can be difficult to get to.

This means that in a small town, a medical professional can examine a patient in front of a visual and audio monitor, while a specialist in a big city somewhere else – even on the other side of the world - can look on, and provide expert advice in real time. Medical personnel have access to all the patient's information (including such things as X-rays) at the click of a button. They can also participate in educational or administrative session with colleagues half way around the world! It saves time and money, and helps keep patients alive and well.

About the Inventor

The decision to concentrate on Telemedicine was largely accidental. Linda and Dorothy felt they balanced each other's strengths and weaknesses and decided to partner in business as engineering consultants. They moved into Linda's basement and took out a line of credit. In 1994, one of their first clients hired them to study the healthcare market. Although that client went bankrupt, the research Linda and Dorothy had gathered led them to telemedicine, which at the time was a relatively new industry in the U.S. The more they thought about it, the more they realized that Canada was an ideal country in which to kickstart the concept. In the U.S., there are many healthcare systems: in Canada there is only one, which is run by the government. Furthermore, Canada has fewer telephone companies to deal with (in the States, there are many) and Canada's population is sparser and spread out over a larger area. They knew first-hand that patients in their own province, with its many rural communities, and drastic budget cuts to government funding, needed better access to good medical care.

They could sense a big opportunity. Identifying a problem (they typically call it "an opportunity"!) is the first thing innovators always do. The second is finding the solution. Linda Weaver and Dorothy Spense felt they had both. Their solution was not simply to provide state-of-the-art technology to clients, but to provide support for implementing the technology. However, they soon found that funding was their biggest challenge. Designing the equipment was easy; most of it was already available. But paying for the equipment ordered by their clients was daunting, given their small line of credit. One solution was to partner with a company who could help with the financing. They chose Maritime Medical Care Inc., and sold them 50% of their company.

Today, they have more than 160 telehealth networking systems installed across Canada and internationally, and are a Canadian leader in telehealth. Their home province of Nova Scotia became the first province in Canada to establish a province-wide telehealth network and, with 53 videoconferencing telehealth systems, 36 teleradiology scanning systems and 11 teleradiology reading stations, it is possibly one of the largest PC-based telehealth networks in the world. Linda Weaver was the first woman to become the President of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Canada, which represents 15,000 electricians and engineers across the country. She was recently named a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada – only the second woman in Nova Scotia to be honoured with this title.