Meet John Shanks, founder of Kraken Coding

John Shanks is the founder of Kraken Coding, the company behind Clinical Branches, a clinical decision support platform that helps healthcare professionals access evidence-based guidance at the point of care. Originally trained as a pharmacist, John combined his clinical experience with a passion for technology to develop a solution that is now used in more than 75 hospitals across Australia and Canada. Selected for Tyree IHealthE's 2024 Innovation Catalyst Program, John received support across regulatory strategy, intellectual property protection, commercialisation and funding readiness. This support helped position the company for a successful $1.93 million NSW Medical Devices Fund grant to accelerate the next stage of its growth. We sat down with John to discuss the inspiration behind Kraken Coding and his experience with the Innovation Catalyst Program.

What first made you realise there was a better way to support clinical decision-making?

I was a clinical pharmacist at Royal Darwin Hospital, and what struck me was how much of a hospital's expertise sits in people's heads and in PDFs nobody opens. We had excellent guidelines. They just were not reachable at the moment someone was writing on a chart. In 2017 I worked on a set of digital pathways to help standardise prescribing and in 2018 I started a project on dynamic ward lists, trying to work out which patients the pharmacy team should see first. That was the beginning of it. 

The problem was never a lack of evidence, it was the distance between the evidence and the bedside

I went and learned to code so I could close that distance myself.

How has participating in IHealthE's Innovation Catalyst Program supported the growth of Kraken Coding?

The Catalyst Program was the first time anyone made us look honestly at our own weak points.

The Phase 2 self-assessment forced us to grade ourselves across clinical, business, regulatory, technology and team, and it was uncomfortable reading. We were strong on clinical evidence and in-market traction, and genuinely weak on protecting our IP and on the regulatory pathway for the machine learning work we wanted to do. The support went straight at those gaps: stakeholder identification, a regulatory strategy for the ML component, an IP protection strategy, and help with a major grant application. Two years on, the IHealthE advisors still provide feedback.

How important will the NSW Medical Devises Fund support be to Kraken's next phase of scaling?

It is the difference between growing at the pace our cash flow allows and growing at the pace the market is asking for. The $1.93 million is tied to ten milestones running out to 2029, and it funds the two things we could not otherwise afford to do at the same time: broadening the clinical content well beyond antimicrobial stewardship, and building and validating the machine learning that turns pathway usage into patient prioritisation. Around 73 per cent of the project spend is NSW-based, so it funds a real team rather than contractors. It is also non-dilutive, which at our stage matters enormously.

What impact are you most proud of Clinical Branches having on clinicians and patient care?

There is a recent research piece funded by the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre conducted by UTS which I am excited about, but won't steal their thunder with results here. Internal audits at hospitals have shown that before Clinical Branches, 28 per cent of antimicrobial prescribing was rated optimal and 22 per cent was inadequate. Afterwards, optimal was 68 per cent and inadequate had fallen to 4 per cent. That was not our audit, it was run by independent pharmacists and an emergency physician. What I am proudest of is where it happened.

After implementing our tool a patient in a small rural town got the same quality of prescribing decision as someone in a tertiary hospital.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Two things. First, none of this came out of a lab. It came from working in hospitals in the Top End and later in Broken Hill and being frustrated by the same problem every day. I would encourage other clinicians sitting on an idea to take it seriously, because the instinct for what will actually get used on a ward round is very hard to acquire later. Second, the ecosystem around us has mattered more than I expected. IHealthE, ANDHealth and the NSW Medical Devices Fund each arrived at a different stage and each solved a different problem.

Kraken Coding was named Australian Healthcare Startup of the Year at the 2025 Australian Healthcare Week Pitchfest and has since secured additional support through ANDHealth+, with the IHealthE team continuing to advise the company.

Visit the Kraken Coding website to learn more about Clinical Branches.To get in touch, email info@krakencoding.com or connect with John and the team via LinkedIn.