True Patriot Love - July 25, 2026


TPL On The Road： St John's Newfoundland ft Dr Liam Kelly


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

183.2

Word count

1,846

Sentence count

29


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 the East Coast tour continues on true patriot love and today we're in st.
00:00:09.560 John's and we're lucky enough to have dr. Liam Kelly welcome and you are the
00:00:15.240 director of research and innovation for health services Newfoundland and Labrador
00:00:19.440 yes I get that right yeah I just Liam for okay thank you thank you I'll call
00:00:25.520 doc if that's okay so i was traveling in yesterday and i was uh reading up on your bio very impressive
00:00:33.280 and you're you're homegrown i am yeah yeah you've grown and raised saint john's yeah in gander
00:00:40.240 in gander no no mount pearl yeah sorry yeah okay yeah and you grew up here and your your specialty
00:00:48.320 so what i and you can tell me about it because you you lived it but um you started off kind of
00:00:54.080 with a really keen interest in kinesiology and physiology that's right because of your wrestling
00:00:59.920 background and and so is that what got you into i'm always amazed because you know the dedication
00:01:06.800 it takes to get into um the medical health business is so interesting to me because it is
00:01:13.680 you know it has to be a passion a commitment and something that catches you that brings you in
00:01:18.160 because you know how much time do you spend in schooling oh yeah well a long a long time right
00:01:23.840 so so all of it so kinesiology was an easy choice for me because sport was so important to me and
00:01:30.240 always sport performance and how do you get better playing baseball um as you said with wrestling
00:01:35.200 and stuff like that so um yeah so that was my undergraduate degree was focused on you know
00:01:40.960 human performance sport performance um studied kinesiology and then went on did a master of
00:01:46.800 science in exercise and environmental physiology again with that kind of sport mindset but quickly
00:01:54.560 you know living in in a small province in the eastern part of the the country sport is important
00:02:02.000 but the bigger challenges are related to health and and well-being so i wanted then to take what
00:02:08.400 i've learned and what i've developed from from sport performance to try to apply to clinical
00:02:12.320 populations and that's why i chose to go into medicine yeah well you and i so you finished
00:02:18.960 i started so i i played football yeah and uh i decided at one point i wanted to go into sports
00:02:26.400 medicine okay so that was my big thing i was going to sort of go down that path and i got going um
00:02:33.200 and i started off at u of t that's where i was going to school and i went and did a work term
00:02:38.880 at northwestern old northwestern hospital in toronto and uh i thought you know definitely
00:02:44.480 i was going to start working with athletes and i was going to be doing all this stuff
00:02:47.920 i went in and they actually put me in with stroke victims okay so i had to do rehab with stroke
00:02:54.400 victims uh mostly elderly you know and uh it was a tough six months i gotta tell you and then
00:03:02.400 you know for a lot of reasons i didn't finish and it was i would have loved to have finished
00:03:07.200 but for financial reasons you know i i tore an acl playing football i had to kind of drop my
00:03:13.840 bursary and then quite frankly i'd go to work because you know there's a lot of reasons why
00:03:17.840 you don't make to the end of anything you do but but i ended up uh you know going another path but
00:03:23.520 you know i know the dedication that it takes to go but you have a keen interest you know you have
00:03:28.800 a keen interest always in the kinesiology and uh i was reading sort of between uh how people
00:03:35.440 function when they're dormant and how people function when they're moving and you've done a
00:03:40.560 lot of research in that totally yeah no it's very interesting to hear that sport medicine piece
00:03:45.280 because i was thinking along that that same lines right and i had the opportunity when i was doing
00:03:50.720 my phd to work with stroke as well right oh wow yeah so hard yeah stroke ms uh patients and and
00:03:57.120 a lot of the the challenges that that they have around functional independence um and that's
00:04:02.960 exactly what we did yeah so they have hemiparesis yeah um so mobility limitations and most of my phd
00:04:11.600 work was focused on translating sport performance and being able to help people with stroke and ms
00:04:16.640 recover wow functionally uh along that that ways there's there's uh one of the publications that
00:04:22.480 i'm you know most proud of is actually an opinion paper that i wrote with um my uh my supervisor
00:04:29.360 Dr. Michelle Plowman around sport like periodization of training right yeah so models so in in rehab
00:04:38.640 world it's usually we have a period of time about three months after stroke people are heavily doing
00:04:45.280 rehabilitation then people get discharged right but trying to adopt more of a sport performance
00:04:50.320 model where you're have a longer term training plan to be able to increase functional uh recovery
00:04:55.600 was was one of the things that we worked on yeah no that's terrific and i know we have a group
00:05:00.080 that's so one of our businesses in char i mentioned to you we actually uh give heavily to charity
00:05:05.920 yeah it's built basically on a charitable model and one of the charities actually deals with with
00:05:10.960 ms people and char and i have actually been out to quite a few sessions where they have them
00:05:16.240 boxing they have them doing functions before they're you know as they're progressing to try
00:05:21.360 to keep their motor skills going and you know as they're as they're you know as they're progressing
00:05:26.720 through the disease right and that's that's such a hard thing to watch but but they're so it's
00:05:32.000 amazing to watch them because they're so resilient and the things they do and uh really it's amazing
00:05:37.920 and i you know it's interesting when i went to northwestern hospital so i i went in and you
00:05:43.040 mentioned you know the stroke victims uh especially elderly people tend to have like a huge paralysis
00:05:48.720 in their limbs right you know and so they they get very stiff so you have to massage them and
00:05:53.920 you have to try to get motion to get you know blood flow and everything going in and we were
00:05:58.960 doing that and it's painful yeah right there you know there's a lot of pain to it so we used to
00:06:04.080 sing and i always remember that as you know we used to sing all these songs yeah to get their
00:06:08.800 mind off it which kind of you know it's it's it's you know you go through life my dad owned a moving
00:06:14.480 company and and i used to work with him quite a bit and furniture was quite heavy when i i'm
00:06:21.360 turning 60 now so furniture was all made mostly steel uh and it was very heavy when i was doing
00:06:27.680 it with my dad not today like kia furniture much lighter today yeah so so you know we used to go
00:06:33.680 lift furniture and we used to put the lifting straps under the furniture and the fridges and
00:06:37.920 and stuff.
00:06:38.760 And they used to sing.
00:06:41.400 So as we would lift, they would sing
00:06:43.800 to lift the furniture
00:06:45.400 because it was so heavy up and down the stairs.
00:06:47.420 So they didn't focus on the pain of all the lifting.
00:06:49.980 Yeah, so it's interesting, I was doing that
00:06:52.900 and we'd sing along and the people would sing
00:06:55.180 and it was quite a, the atmosphere was,
00:06:58.180 it started off tough
00:06:59.160 because they didn't want to get going with us.
00:07:01.500 But over time, as we sang,
00:07:02.940 we spent time with them during the day,
00:07:05.360 they were happy, but it took time.
00:07:07.280 It's like anything else.
00:07:08.220 And, you know, I was looking, it's interesting
00:07:11.380 because I was kind of thinking about the show today
00:07:13.620 and I was thinking, you know, medicine itself
00:07:16.380 is kind of capsulated in that, you know, there's,
00:07:20.140 it takes so much time to develop something
00:07:22.680 and to research it and get it to market.
00:07:25.660 And, you know, you have to be patient
00:07:28.520 because the trials and the testing and failing
00:07:32.360 and succeeding and going for approvals and regulatory.
00:07:37.820 And I know, you know, you're, as I was coming in today,
00:07:42.020 you know, you guys are getting a reputation
00:07:43.980 of being really good at that.
00:07:45.680 Like, and I, in my hat off to you,
00:07:48.320 because, you know, when the word starts to get out
00:07:50.780 that the province is kind of starting to lead the way,
00:07:55.200 you know, tell me a little about that.
00:07:56.480 Cause you know, that's you, you know,
00:07:58.120 that's your leadership and your team.
00:08:00.260 How are you guys managing that right now?
00:08:02.000 Yeah, so that burden of evidence, right?
00:08:04.140 When you start thinking about coming up
00:08:05.860 with a new medical intervention
00:08:07.860 or layering things on behavioral,
00:08:10.520 like singing and stuff like that.
00:08:12.680 When you're doing things like this,
00:08:14.640 you need to demonstrate that as, first of all, safe.
00:08:17.700 And then at some point,
00:08:18.940 it's gonna create meaningful outcomes for patients.
00:08:24.580 From an innovation perspective, as you said,
00:08:26.600 now within the hospital system,
00:08:29.760 now we've set up our living lab.
00:08:32.000 which is supposed to be a real world test bed
00:08:34.240 for new ideas and concepts, right?
00:08:37.200 And basically we say that no idea is a bad idea.
00:08:41.240 Let's try and see what works.
00:08:44.620 But you see the thing with it,
00:08:47.280 trying and seeing what happens
00:08:48.760 is a lot of the challenges that you get to adopting.
00:08:52.400 You need to have a structured approach
00:08:53.720 in terms of how you introduce technology
00:08:56.380 or process innovations into the system
00:08:59.120 and to be able to test them in a way
00:09:01.060 that Jerry will answer very specific questions.
00:09:03.540 Is it safe?
00:09:05.180 Will people use it if it's brought into the system?
00:09:08.120 Can we feasibly measure outcomes and drive impact on that?
00:09:12.460 And what is the effect of that solution
00:09:15.300 if you're gonna embed it into the hospital system?
00:09:20.080 So that's largely what we've done.
00:09:21.360 We've developed within our Living Lab model
00:09:23.960 a specific approach to being able to bring innovations in.
00:09:28.540 Wow, I like the living lab.
00:09:30.480 Yeah, you know, and are you finding people coming?
00:09:33.720 So it's interesting, I find, and again,
00:09:36.020 that charitable business I'm referring to,
00:09:38.260 I find it interesting,
00:09:39.400 the more sort of innovative things I did in that business,
00:09:42.300 because when I was, I came back to Canada in 2011,
00:09:48.400 I was living in the States for 12 years.
00:09:50.600 I came back to Canada, started it up,
00:09:52.260 and all of a sudden, everyone in the industry kind of came,
00:09:55.740 and they showed up at my front door eating
00:09:57.840 and hanging out to try to figure out what I was doing.
00:10:00.080 Are you finding people starting to,
00:10:02.560 as you're developing the living life?