Mark Sakamoto is the executive vice-president of Think Research, a health-tech company is now publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It is valued around $180 million. -- PHOTO COURTESY JEFF NOON
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@mocranker
Toronto-based health-tech company Think Research is starting the New Year with big goals, and executive vice-president Mark Sakamoto is excited for the company’s future.
The digital health company went public last week and is now being publicly traded, with its value sitting around $180 million based off the price of its shares.
“It’s a really exciting time for us,” said longtime Hatter Sakamoto. “That number is really humbling for us and really motivating for our company.”
The company is trading as ‘THNK’ and shares sit below $5, which put the value around $180 million to start the year.
“We tried to speed up the process as expeditiously as possible,” said Sakamoto. “Going public was months in the making and we were able to secure $33 million as part of that reverse takeover.”
Sakamoto says people like doctors and nurses are the main user of Think Research’s services, but end up using the tools to help people in need of care.
“Our goal is to organize the world’s healthcare knowledge so everyone can get the best care,” said Sakamoto. “We do that by gathering huge amounts of clinical data, and best evidence, best practice. From that we created digital apps that help doctors and clinicians make the best decision at the point of care.”
While the company was doing well before the COVID-19 pandemic, Sakamoto says growth in the digital health industry has been huge since March.
“COVID has highlighted the need for democratizing clinical knowledge as quickly as possible,” he said. “We’ve seen maybe 10 years of digitizing health care compressed into 10 months.
“The market is really looking at digital health companies that operate at scale like Think Research does.”
Sakamoto says it has been a long journey filled with learning along the way, and that the future is bright.
“We started 10 years ago sitting around my business partner’s condo table with about 10 employees,” he said. “To be around 200 employees and operating on four continents is just incredible.”
The longtime Hatter, who still has family and friends here, says Think Research was helped out big time by people back home.
“Some of the early support for the company came from Hatters,” he said. “This has been a journey shared by people back home as well.”
Interesting!