Rencontrez Simone Peets : Apporter une nouvelle perspective sur l'innovation chez PHC Ventures
Simone Peets grew up watching her parents navigate the health care system from the inside — her mother a hematologist, her father an intensivist, both physicians at St. Paul’s Hospital (SPH). It’s a vantage point that shaped how she thinks. “Seeing it from my mom’s lens has been really interesting,” she says. “She does a lot of value-based care work, and that’s something I want to carry into my own career.”
Now a fourth-year economics student at Queen’s University with a focus on health economics, Peets is spending the summer as an intern at PHC Ventures, putting that value lens to work in a very hands-on way.
Her most tangible contribution so far: an AI-powered business development tool built using Python and Copilot. The tool lets teams query information in plain language to identify relevant clinical expertise and opportunities across PHC. It’s a direct answer to a friction point that has long slowed things down.
“Historically, we’ve just relied on known connections or word of mouth,” Peets explains. “That can take a really long time. So that was a key factor in what led this project.”
What makes the tool notable isn’t just what it does, it’s how she built it. Peets had little prior experience with AI agent development; most of her university experience has been the opposite. “In school, AI is a no-go,” she says with a laugh. “So I tend to stay away from it.” Working at PHC Ventures flipped that. “It’s been refreshing to be in a workplace that embraces AI and encourages us to think about how it can be used in meaningful, responsible ways.”
The tool may still be new, but its potential extends well beyond a single use case with opportunities to streamline how teams across Providence Health Care connect, collaborate, and find expertise.
The physician-matching project is one thread in a broader experience that Peets describes as intentionally wide-ranging. Stuart Bowyer, Senior Director of Commercialization and Partnerships, along with the team have given her room to move across operations, workflow optimization, and exploratory problem-solving brainstorming sessions where they sketch out goals, then she takes her own route to get there.
“No two days are the same,” she says. “I’m often brought into different conversations and projects, and I enjoy adapting quickly and figuring out where I can add value.”
It’s also offered exposure that doesn’t exist in a lecture hall. Last week, she got a tour of the OR. “That’s not the kind of experience you typically get in business or venture capital,” she acknowledges. “But it gives you a much better understanding of why the work matters and what it looks like on the clinical side. You can’t learn that in school.”
The team, which she describes without irony as “the Dream Team,” has been a big part of what’s made the experience click. “They make a real effort to check in, include me in conversations and make sure I feel supported,” she says. “Coming in as a student, surrounded by people who are so experienced — that’s been really valuable.”
Outside the office, Peets is having a summer that reflects her range. When she’s not at PHC Ventures, she’s chaperoning match ball carriers for the FIFA World Cup where she gets to pick up kids from the airport and watch games alongside them at pitch-side. “There’s just an energy in the city right now,” she says.
Back home in Vancouver for the season, she’s also spending time with Luna, her chocolate lab, hiking and walking the beach. In quieter moments, she paints — acrylics, mostly — and bakes. Her Queen’s roommates, she notes, have learned to recognize a stress-bake in the making: “They always know there’ll be something in the kitchen for them.”
Looking ahead, she plans to work for a few years after graduation, travel (with Asia and Africa are at the top of her list) and eventually pursue an MBA, likely at UBC. But she’s in no rush to draw the map. What she’s most comfortable with, it turns out, is exactly the kind of environment PHC Ventures has given her: one where the path forward isn’t fully defined, and where building something useful matters more than having all the answers up front.
Her advice to other students considering a similar opportunity is simple: “Take the chance. You’ll learn things you wouldn’t necessarily learn in school or in a more traditional internship, and you’ll be supported along the way. It’s a unique environment where you can contribute, grow, and come away feeling that the work you did really mattered.”
About PHC Ventures internships
PHC Ventures regularly engages interns and co-op students as part of its commitment to developing the next generation of health innovation talent. Positions are competitively recruited and funded by PHC Ventures, with students embedded across projects that span clinical innovation, commercialization, and system improvement.
To learn more about internship opportunities at PHC Ventures, contact us at info@phcventures.ca