Seeking awards, landing credibility, raising profile

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This article was published 23/04/2025 (226 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Norm Silver and David Berkowits have an ideal partnership in QDoc Inc.

Silver is a physician/entrepreneur looking for solutions to fill gaps in the health-care system; Berkowits is the IT entrepreneur that helps make those solutions work in the real world with increasingly sophisticated digital tools, including artificial intelligence.

QDoc was founded to provide online virtual medical care when telephone appointments with doctors became professionally acceptable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The technology platform and the recruitment of physicians has gone so well the Winnipeg-based company’s revenue grew by more than 30 per cent between 2023 and 2024, up to $4.8 million, with the expectation of a similar rate of growth for the next few years.

In the meantime, QDoc’s billing and booking software — the latter developed to handle appointments at the Minor Illness & Injury Clinic (which Silver is a co-founder) — are effectively stand-alone businesses, both now marketed to third parties.

The booking software, MediNav (being touted by Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew in a recent Instagram post for use in provincially owned clinics) is viewed as taking a lot of stress and time out of the search for a medical appointment.

However, as is the case with virtually every new company, there’s never sufficient time or money to do enough marketing. In an effort to get more exposure, Silver said QDoc is committed to applying for — and trying to win or be a finalist in — at least one national award and one local award every year.

It can be time-consuming work, Silver said, but they’ve now got templates with all the information they typically need for such award application pitches.

QDoc has achieved its goal again.

It will be one of seven companies honoured as a Future Champion by the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, which has revived the Manitoba Business Awards that had been on hiatus for five years since the pandemic.

It’s also a finalist in the People’s Choice category in the inaugural ScaleUP Awards, put on in association with the Growth Catalyst program at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“Winning or being a finalist in awards programs definitely give you credibility, 100 per cent,” said Silver

The QDoc virtual medical clinic is currently only available in Manitoba and is relatively well-known in its home province, but “I’d be surprised if one of our products was not in different provinces by the end of 2025,” Silver said.

A little national profile before such expansion can make a real difference.

In addition to the online virtual health-care service, which is growing by more than 50 per cent per year, its medical billing software (developed to integrate with the QDoc service) has already been split out as a separate product and will be ready to scale in a few months.

It’s that kind of growth the ScaleUP Awards is trying to address.

Calgary-based strategic adviser Robert Vander Wees, awards leader for the program, said the rational for starting the event was — according to research done at Mount Royal — there was far more support available for startup companies than for firms that had already started generating revenue but were finding it difficult to break through the plateau that often follows initial success.

Eligibility for the program is limited to companies with revenue between $3 million to $50 million and 20 to 100 employees.

Last year, the awards were restricted to Alberta companies; this year, it was expanded to include all four western provinces.

While all the finalists have not yet been released, QDoc may very well be the only Manitoba company in the running.

Silver said applying to such awards programs is something more local companies should engage in. Not only does it inject credibility and raise profiles, it reminds the broader national and international business world there really are great companies in Manitoba.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca