John Shanks didn’t set out to build a startup. For more than a decade he worked as a hospital pharmacist in the Northern Territory’s government health system, navigating the daily realities of busy wards, complex guidelines and the constant pressure to get decisions right. Over time, those experiences revealed something bigger: many of the systems clinicians rely on simply weren’t built for the way healthcare actually works.
Today, Shanks is the founder of Kraken Coding, a health-tech startup developing digital clinical pathways and decision-support tools designed to help clinicians make safer, faster and more consistent decisions. We sat down with the pharmacist-turned-founder to discuss how those frontline frustrations evolved into a platform to improve clinical workflows and patient safety.
The idea for the company grew out of everyday stress on the ward. As a hospital pharmacist, Shanks often worried something critical might have been missed in a patient’s medication chart; a pressure that sometimes led him to stay late or even drive back to the hospital to double-check his work. Many of the problems were systemic: hospitals repeatedly rewriting the same guidelines, paper ward lists that disappeared each day, and the difficulty of identifying high-risk patients, such as those with kidney impairment at risk of receiving certain medications.
To manage the workload, Shanks began building simple software tools for himself by turning complex guidelines into structured decision pathways and creating systems to flag at-risk patients. When those tools began to gain attention and win awards, he realised the idea could scale beyond a single hospital. With support from Brandon BioCatalyst’s CUREator, the concept evolved into a broader platform aimed at improving clinical decision-making and medication safety across health systems.
At its core, Shanks’ startup focuses on clinical decision support and digital workflow tools for healthcare teams, particularly pharmacists and clinicians working on hospital wards.
One of the company’s key innovations is transforming lengthy clinical guidelines into structured, step-by-step decision pathways. Instead of clinicians navigating dense documents while under pressure, the software asks targeted questions, such as whether a patient is pregnant, has allergies, or has impaired kidney function, and then provides a clear treatment recommendation.
The goal is simple: help clinicians make faster, safer decisions without missing critical details. The platform turns complex guidelines into clear decision pathways that hospitals can share, reducing duplicated work across teams. It can also flag at-risk patients such as those with poor kidney function prescribed high-risk medications by replacing the “dirty Excel spreadsheet full of IF statements” Shanks once relied on.
By digitising ward lists, the platform also replaces fragile paper workflows with a clear, auditable record of which patients were reviewed, what decisions were made and who still needs follow-up. Previously, clinicians relied on printed lists that were updated daily, creating gaps in continuity. “Every day we would shred that list and then print a new one,” Shanks says. “It wasn’t great, because if someone was sick the next day you couldn’t tell what had happened with their patients if their list was gone. ”
Building the company also meant a major professional shift. After more than a decade in the public health system, stepping away from a stable government role to focus on a startup required a new mindset. Shanks had always defined his work through patient care, so moving into the private sector meant finding new ways to demonstrate how technology could support the same mission of improving healthcare outcomes.
The transition also introduced new dynamics with colleagues and the broader health system, requiring relationships and collaborations to be reframed within the context of working with a growing technology company. At the same time, healthcare procurement processes can be complex, with formal pathways required before new technology can be adopted. While some regions have been more flexible, navigating those systems has been part of the learning curve of building a health-tech company.
Beyond initial hurdles, the startup has steadily expanded. Today the platform is live across sixteen health services, with strong uptake in Western Australia and growing adoption in Victoria. The company has also begun expanding internationally through a partnership with Northwest Telepharmacy in Canada, where it supports four hospitals across multiple sites.
The Canadian healthcare system has offered new insights as well. Pharmacists there often have broader authority to adjust treatments and prescribing, which changes how clinical pathways are designed.
Looking ahead, Shanks sees the company continuing to expand its decision-support tools while integrating more advanced AI capabilities. Yet he still feels connected to clinical practice, and hopes to maintain a balance between healthcare and technology.
“I like the idea of being a clinician by day and a builder by night,” he says. For Shanks, the mission hasn’t changed: use technology to reduce risk, improve decision-making and ultimately make healthcare safer for
