Patrice Arcand
Chemist by training, computer scientist by choice, data analyst by vocation. Thirty years spent making data talk that was only waiting to be asked.
The path here
I started in analytical chemistry, with a bachelor's degree from the Université de Sherbrooke and a concentration in pharmaceutical chemistry. Then I realised that what interested me most in a laboratory wasn't the bench work — it was what we did with the numbers that came off it. A computer science certificate from the Université de Montréal settled the question.
For fifteen years I worked in bioanalytical laboratories — LC-MS/MS method development, analysis of clinical study samples, team supervision as assistant research director. In FDA, GLP and ISO regulated environments, where a badly written procedure is expensive and an untraceable number is worthless. That's where I started automating, because I could see my people losing their days to file handling.
Then seven years in business intelligence at a large Québec insurer: data warehouses, Power BI reporting, SQL queries, quality control, requirements gathering with internal clients. And in between, a good dozen consulting engagements across the public and private sectors — business analysis, functional analysis, quality assurance, Lean, change management.
AID came out of one observation: science- and engineering-driven organisations have remarkable data and almost nobody who can make it speak in their language.
How I work
The classic consulting model — an army of juniors producing slide decks, supervised by a handful of partners — is collapsing, and that's a good thing. AI does that groundwork in seconds. What's left is judgement, context, change management and ethics.
So I don't sell hours and I don't deliver reports. I deliver solutions that work, with the quantified saving next to them, and I train your people to run them without me. I use AI heavily in my own work — that's what lets one person deliver at the pace of a small team.
And I tell you the truth. If your project doesn't make sense, if your data isn't ready, or if someone else is better placed than I am, you'll hear it in the first hour — not on the third invoice.
AID means help
The acronym reads as aide in French and aid in English, and that's exactly the programme: concrete help to make your data speak. The A in the logo, structured and graduated, stands for method and foundation. The copper network rising from it is your data and the artificial intelligence that works it.
The first hour is free. So is the assessment, if we keep going together.
One hour by video call, no strings attached, to understand your context and check whether I'm the right person for you. If I'm not, I'll tell you.