Neil Seeman

Education

Seeman is a 1988 graduate of the high-school Upper Canada College and currently serves as a member of the Upper Canada College Association Council. Seeman has a BA in English and Political Science from Queen's University in 1992 and a JD in 1995 from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Following his legal education, Seeman received a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University.

Research career

At the end of the 1990s Seeman began working on the editorial staff of the American magazine the National Review. His research work in the United States also extended into the field of youth violence. He also served as in-house counsel for the National Citizens' Coalition under the leadership of Stephen Harper, the former Prime Minister of Canada. Seeman was a Research Fellow at the Fraser Institute, and founding director of the Institute's CANSTATS Project. Seeman was also a founding member of the editorial board at the National Post in 1998 and a contributor to the Financial Post. In 2001 he became a member of the editorial board of the National Review Online.

Prior to the new healthcare laws in the United States, Seeman was quoted discussing the need for disruptive innovation, more attention to financial variables, and other new ideas in the healthcare industry. In 1998, Seeman was a pre-IPO investor in the successful NASDAQ-listed Internet (JCOM) software and technology company, J2 Global, specializing in cloud services for businesses and multi-messaging. In the late 2000s, following research positions at the Hospital Report Research Collaborative at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, and at IBM, Seeman founded and became the CEO of the University of Toronto’s Health Strategy Innovation Cell, focusing on low-cost Internet-based solutions in healthcare. Seeman has published in academic journals including Healthcare Quarterly, Health Care Management Review, Healthcare Policy, Electronic Healthcare, Journal of Participatory Medicine, Synapse, Nature, Journal of Affective Disorders, Psychiatric Times, Canadian Medical Association Journal, and Journal of Psychiatric Practice. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto in the Institute for Health Policy, Management & Evaluation and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health Policy and Senior Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto, as well as an Adjunct Professor at Ryerson University. In 2008 he published an article in HealthcarePapers, where he coined the term post-partisanship. In 2014, he was voted one of “20 Global Researchers to Watch” by Survey Magazine.

In 2013, at the Open Government Partnership 2013 Seeman was a part of the largest perception survey ever conducted on the topic of open government. In October, 2014, Neil Seeman won in the individual category of the NGMR Disruptive Innovation Awards for "outspoken advocates for innovation and disruption".

Business career

Seeman is the founder and CEO of The RIWI Corporation, a company used for an all-country and all-device online and randomized non-panel survey technology platform Seeman invented in 2007 and patented in 2011. RIWI offers a patented random domain intercept technology (RDIT) that is a new approach to capturing a non-incented global stream of respondents and data. On June 18, 2013, The RIWI Corporation won the Insight Innovation Competition (IIeX) at the annual Insight Innovation exchange North America for its disruptive online data capture methodology. In the 2012 Crédit Agricole Securities Report, RIWI published its 2012 Egypt elections data, and has since been credited as being "the only research firm to predict the Egypt election" in 2012.

Book chapters

In 2002 Seeman published the chapter "Low-Tech, Low-Brow" in the book Better Medicine: Reforming Canadian Health Care. In 2004 Seeman published the chapter "Psychopharmacology and Motherhood" in the book Parental Psychiatric Disorder: Distressed Parents and their Families with his mother Dr. Mary Violette Seeman.

Collaborations with family

In 2006 Seeman published the book Psyche in the Lab: Celebrating Brain Science in Canada with Dr. Mary Violette Seeman. In 2009, with his father, University of Toronto Professor Emeritus and neuroscientist Philip Seeman, he co-authored Psychosis: Discovery of the Antipsychotic Receptor, which described the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis invented by his father.

XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame

In 2011 Seeman published the book XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame with co-author Patrick Luciani. Seeman highlighted that about a third of healthcare spending in Canada was directly linked to obesity. He himself lost nearly eighty pounds while writing the book. Drawing on global RIWI data, the book also discusses the correlation between countries that have the highest level of obesity and the countries most willing to shame its obese citizens. Seeman claims that despite its use in prior health crises, shaming is not a solution for obesity. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Seeman claims the most effective healthcare solutions would "annoy both the left and the right", and have to be apolitical in nature. The book was short-listed for the Donner Prize in 2012. Terrence Sullivan stated the authors' idea for "healthy living vouchers" to curb obesity was "empowering the citizen as consumer and he or she will choose wisely and buy lifestyle, diet and exercise experiences tailored to his or her needs to lose weight...The voucher solution may be a touch too close to a one-trick pony in a world where many taxpayers might want their government to spend the money elsewhere. Nevertheless they have provided us with a clear summary of our current obesity challenges alongside the range of possible avenues to take on this "wicked problem," Seeman and Luciani's public policy book received an "Outstanding" rating from the 2012 University Press Books committee.

Ebooks

In December 2012, with co-author and RIWI President Eric Meerkamper, Seeman published the e-book Smarter Data: Eliciting Insights from the Cloud. In October, 2013, he co-authored the e-book GRIT Consumer Participation in Research (CPR) Report: A Study of Survey-Takers in 200+ Countries and Regions around the World with Alton Ing.