From an idea to the operating room

Akshar Tailor has long been interested in the intersection of medicine and technology. As a second-year MD learner, he joined Temerty Medicine’s Medical Innovation & Technology (MIT) Program. The 24-week program, launched in 2024, helps Foundations and Clerkship learners build practical entrepreneurship skills to tackle real-world healthcare challenges.

Through the program, Tailor turned his curiosity into a hands-on project and developed the Anesthesiology Setup Checklist Assistant (ASCA), a digital tool designed to support efficiency and patient safety in the operating room.

Now in his third year of medical school, Tailor spoke with Temerty Medicine writer Blake Eligh about his path to medicine, his experience in the MIT Program, and how it helped him take the next step in his interest in healthcare technology.

Tell us a bit about yourself and what drew you to medicine.

I was born in India and came to Canada when I was three. I grew up in Vaughan, Ont., and have always been interested in healthcare, but I was also drawn to technology. I also spent high school teaching myself graphic design and user experience and interface design.

Before medical school, I worked on a website that took radiology research and publications and highlighted key points for residents. I designed and developed that site from the ground up.

Throughout my time in the MD Program, I’ve explored initiatives in medical education and technology. A big part of that was thinking about how users interact with tools. What’s the best way to design something that’s intuitive and easy to use? ASCA is the result of one of those moments when I had an idea and actually tried to develop it, hopefully to the point where it can be implemented and used.

How did you get involved with the MIT Program?

I learned about the MIT Program during my second year. I liked the focus on innovation and technology, and the fact that it was one of the first programs of its kind at Temerty Medicine.

I was drawn to its flexible, self-paced structure and the way it applies entrepreneurial thinking in a medical context.

The program includes hybrid modules with podcast-style videos that are conversational and easy to follow, featuring physicians who have built startups and worked in health technology. You can go at your own pace and get real value out of it.

What did you take away from the program?

Coming in, I was very focused on design thinking and creativity. The MIT Program gave me practical advice on how to define an idea, assess market fit, raise capital and think about finding investors. It also introduced concepts like minimum viable products, market research and iteration.

Most importantly, it helped me think critically: what problem was I trying to solve, and how was I trying to solve it?

During a networking event at the end of the core program, we heard from physicians about their own innovation journeys. That was a great experience. I met people with similar interests and heard about the ideas they were working on.

Some of the speakers were in residency, while others were already staff physicians who noticed a problem and developed a solution. I also heard from people who split their time between clinical medicine and developing technology. It was reassuring to see that you can keep up interests in multiple areas and still contribute meaningfully to patient care.

How did ASCA come out of that experience?

Over the summer before clerkship, I shadowed an anesthesiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital. I had also worked in an oral surgery clinic, so I had some baseline exposure to anesthesiology.

I was thinking about how I could create something very low-friction for the user that could improve efficiency and standardization in the operating room. I noticed there were a lot of steps anesthesiologists need to go through before inducing a patient.

While checklists already exist, I wondered, why not make it digital? That’s when I went back to what I learned in the MIT Program and thought about how to develop a minimum viable product to test the idea and see how it could function in this space.

How does ASCA work, and who is it for?

Using Apple Shortcuts, I built ASCA as a tap-through checklist based on Canadian anesthesia guidelines.

It’s a functional check to make sure machines are working and equipment is ready — things like suction and ECG leads. These are steps anesthesiologists already perform, but ASCA takes a standardized approach.

ASCA guides users through equipment and safety checks and generates a summary that can be saved or shared. The best part is that it works on your iPhone or Apple Watch—you don’t have to log in to anything. You can scan a QR code or click a link to access the list.

I think early trainees could benefit most. It gives them something to rely on that’s based on Canadian guidelines and helps take some of the cognitive load off, so they can focus on safely caring for the patient.

What’s next for the project?

ASCA is still a prototype, but I hope to collect feedback from trainees and continue refining the tool. I’ve had support from Sachin Sahni, a professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine and anesthesiologist at Toronto Western Hospital, who has helped ensure the tool aligns with existing guidelines and checklists.

If it proves helpful, the goal would be to develop ASCA into a standalone app, potentially with voice features that work with Siri or AI-enabled prompts. In the longer term, I see opportunities to adapt similar tools to other areas of medicine.

What excites you about this kind of work?

What excites me most is that you can take an idea and turn it into something tangible, and have people use it in a pretty quick turnaround.

As I go through my clerkship rotations, I plan to keep exploring the medical technology space. There are always new tools emerging, like Apple Shortcuts, to bring ideas to life, and that opens up a lot of possibilities for patient-centred tools that can really impact care.

The MIT Program was a great introduction. I’m excited to see where this path might lead.

About the Medical Innovation & Technology (MIT) Program 

Temerty Medicine's Medical Innovation & Technology Program provides MD learners with practical entrepreneurial training to develop solutions to real-world health-care challenges, understand the core components of launching a health-care venture and connect with resources to grow ideas into early-stage ventures. 

Participation is free. Temerty Medicine offers awards and scholarships to help reduce financial barriers, and visionary funding grants provide seed funding for students with exceptional ideas in medical innovation.