Building in healthcare is genuinely hard. The clinical nuance is easy to miss, the Ontario market has its own logic, and the gap between a good idea and something that works in practice is wider than most teams expect.
Building Block Health exists to help close that gap by adding clinical experience wrapped in an entrepreneur's mindset. I'm an active family physician and digital health founder who has built products, navigated the Ontario health system, and practiced medicine through all of it. I work with a small number of companies and health organizations at a time through defined engagements.
Engagements start at $5,000.
Engagements
A clinical and strategic review of what you're building.
For teams at a decision point — before a major build, a product pivot, or a market expansion. An honest assessment of the clinical logic, the user reality, and the strategic assumptions underneath it all.
Face-to-face sessions with business and product teams · Delivered in 3–4 weeks
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Ontario is its own ecosystem.
For companies entering or expanding in Ontario's health system. I map the landscape, stress-test your go-to-market assumptions, and help you understand who the real decision makers are and how things actually get bought here.
Face-to-face sessions with business and marketing teams · Delivered in 2–3 weeks
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Real feedback from real Ontario clinicians and patients.
For teams who need to get out of their own assumptions before they become expensive ones. Structured sessions with practicing Ontario physicians, patients, or both — facilitated and synthesized into insight your team can act on.
Kickoff, user feedback and review sessions · 6 hours total · Physician and patient participants can be sourced for you
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Writing & Point of View
I write about primary care, digital health, and the gap between what the Ontario health system needs and what it tends to get.
A few things I believe
Government shouldn't procure tools for the end-user. It should create the market for them through infrastructure, policy, and funding — then get out of the way. The builders looking to improve healthcare in Ontario and Canada are an under-appreciated asset able to deliver transformative value.
Serving unattached patients isn't a niche problem. It's the design challenge that could reshape how Ontario thinks about primary care infrastructure. It can be the beachhead for shifting from a paper-based paradigm expressed through first-generation EMRs to a new era that embraces market competition on value, AI capabilities, and enables better health outside traditional clinic visits.
The best clinical advisors are the ones still practicing. Proximity to the work matters. Entrepreneurial scars only strengthen that perspective, as it comes from someone who has sat with the challenges and trade-offs around the decisions your team is working through now.
About
I'm Ilan Shahin — family physician, entrepreneur, and occasional translator between the clinical world and the product world.
I co-founded ConsultLoop, an e-referral platform that worked with primary care offices across Ontario on referral management and wait time reporting. I've served on the board of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, led patient attachment initiatives within an Ontario Health Team, and spent considerable time understanding what Ontario's unattached patients actually experience and need.
I still practice, which keeps everything grounded. Building Block Health is how I work with teams who want that clinical perspective in the room before the important decisions get made.
Selected Work
Website targeting unattached patients to help them find a family doctor or NP, learn about self-management and screening, augmented by a RAG chatbot and interactive patient-facing tools.
openprimarycare.comOnline directory of diagnostic imaging, blood labs, and physiotherapy clinics in the GTA. Searchable by test, service, insurance, and operational hours, enhanced by current wait times.
nextavahealth.comContact
I work with a small number of clients at a time. If you're building something in Canadian health and want a clinical and strategic perspective in the room, I'd like to hear about it.
Email: ilan@buildingblockhealth.com