On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on a TechTO stage in 2018. Every TechTO talk is searchable — ask the archive about Aaron ↗
In their words
Despite drowning in data in health care, 80% of the health information we create is not used to improve healthcare.
That critical health care information is buried. It's buried in what we like to call unstructured data, or unstructured clinical narratives. It's buried in the progress notes that physicians write for themselves.
They implemented a system in their workflow where you as a physician go in, take note of all the other opioids that patient is on, it shoots out a number, and then you're supposed to put it into the EMR. You can imagine — less than 2% of the physicians actually did that.
More from TechTO ×1
Quick answers
What does Aaron Leibtag do?
He is co-founder and CEO of Pentavere, a Toronto company he started in 2016 with CTO Steven Aviv. Its DARWEN AI engine reads unstructured clinical documentation — progress notes, transcriptions, scanned forms — and turns it into structured, coded data that health systems and life-sciences partners can analyze.
Did Pentavere raise venture capital?
No. Leibtag deliberately avoided VC. He embedded the company inside a hospital and validated the technology through clinical studies, and pharmaceutical companies funded platform development through sponsored research. Newsweek covered that approach in July 2025.
What did he show on the TechTO stage?
In June 2018 he ran a messy clinical progress note through the engine live and watched it come out as coded rows and columns linked to SNOMED, ICD and MeSH. He also walked through an opioid-disorder study run with St. Michael's Hospital across 85,000 records.