IFIC Canada Virtual Community Session – Advancing Integrated Care with Digital Health Innovation

Title:
Advancing Integrated Care with Digital Health Innovation.
Session Description:
IFIC Canada Co-Leads Jodeme Goldhar and Walter Wodchis hosted a Canada Virtual Community collaboration between the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), IFIC Canada and the Health System Performance Network at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and the Digital Health and Data Enabling Integrated Care IFIC Special Interest Group co-led by Dr. Carolyn Steele Gray.
In this session, they shared learnings from the recent special issue of the Journal of Integrated Care (Emerald), which helps to advance our understanding of the role of digital health in integrated models of care. Participants in this session will learn about and discuss key papers around co-creating, evaluating, and implementing technology through a novel training and education strategy. Participants heard from patient partner Hilary Horlock, who will reflect on what this knowledge means from the patient perspective.
Session Topics
- Co-creating a human-centered integrated care pathway for a digital, user-centric health information solution.
- Adopting technology-enabled integrated care education to address the micro-, meso-, and macro-dimensions of integrated care.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of a digitally enabled integrated care program for post-acute care of stroke patients.
- Discussing how this learning can help us keep the patient at the centre when adopting technology into models of integrated care.
Presenters:

Carolyn Steele-Gray
Tier 2 Canada Research Chair, Implementing Digital Health Innovation
Carolyn Steele Gray, MA, PhD holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Implementing Digital Health Innovation. She is a Scientist at the Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto in Canada. Dr. Steele Gray’s program of work focuses on the role of digital health in supporting integrated and person-centred care delivery for patients with complex care needs, applying implementation science and evaluation methods to uncover how best to integrate technology in novel delivery models.

Eva Turk
Senior Researcher, Centre for Digital Health and Social Innovation, University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten, Austria and Associate Professor, Science Centre Health and Technology, University of South-Eastern Norway
As a health systems researcher, Eva desires to find and implement safe and sustainable healthcare delivery models globally through co-creation and digital solutions.
She has more than 15 years of experience in health systems research. In January 2023, she took a position to build a research group on Inclusive Digital Community Care Program at the Centre for Digital Health and Social Innovation, University of Applied Sciences, St. Poelten, Austria. Previously she worked as senior researcher at the Institute for Health and Society, University of Oslo. She is also an associate professor at the Centre for Health and Technology, University of South-Eastern Norway. Her research has been focused on person centred care, digital health, patient safety, health technology assessment and quality of life. She teaches Public Health at the Medical Faculty, University in Maribor and is Public Health delegate – Emergency Response Unit with the Norwegian Red Cross.
Eva serves as a Board member of Polytekniske Forening- Helse, and Women in Global Health Norway. Until recently she was a Board member of the European Health Management Association and a member of the Expert Council at the Slovenian Digital Health Innovation Lab.
She holds an MBA in Healthcare Management and a PhD in Health Sciences. Originally from Slovenia, she has studied, lived and worked in Austria, Japan, Finland, Spain, Argentina, Syriaand Norway.
She believes that knowledge transfer, capacity building, motivation and empowerment through education represent a cornerstone for improving the society, therefore, she founded SanAstra Foundation, dedicated to improve digital health literacy.

Gerard Carot-Sans
Researcher, Department of Information System, Catalan Health Service, Barcelona, Spain
Gerard Carot-Sans, PharmD, PhD, is a researcher at the Information Systems Department of the Catalan Healthcare Service. He has bachelor’s degrees in Biochemistry and Pharmacy, and PhD by the University of Barcelona.
After a 5-year research stage in the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University Pierre et Marie Curie – INRA (Paris), he worked for eight years as a freelance medical writer and study design advisor. His training in this professional role includes the foundation and advanced training programs of the European Medical Writers Association and specialized courses on scientific writing (Stanford University), statistics (Johns Hopkins University), and machine learning for healthcare (Stanford University). During this period, he was involved in many scientific projects in multiple areas of medicine, mainly providing study design advice and manuscript writing services. Other professional activities as a freelance included delivering seminars and workshops on study design, critical appraisal of the scientific literature, and manuscript writing. He is currently a coordinator of the University Expert Course in Medical Writing by the University of Alcalá de Henares and a teacher of Digital Epidemiology in the Executive Master in Digital Health Care by the University of Barcelona.
In 2020, he joined the DS3 research group of the Catalan Health Service (affiliated to Bellvitge Research Institute, IDIBELL) as a researcher and project coordinator. His main research interests include digital epidemiology, precision medicine, and implementation science, primarily focused on the adoption of evidence-based digital solutions to routine practice. He is currently involved in several projects (either EU-funded or promoted by the Catalan Health Service) within these topics of interest.

Hilary Horlock
Patient Partner; Senior Enterprise Architect, Manager Business Architecture, Digital Health and Strategy Office, Provincial Health Services Authority
Hilary Horlock is constantly looking for ways to make things better. A Senior Enterprise Architect, she specializes in healthcare technology design from an end user perspective.
Passionate about improving the patient experience, this passion gained extra fuel and insight when she learned she had cancer in June of 2015. For her work to improve the breast cancer patient experience, Hilary was awarded the Health Employers Association of BC (HEABC) 2017 Health Care Hero award. In addition to being a voice for change in the patient journey, she worked with patients and oncology professionals to publish the Patient-friendly Guide to Pathology Reports.
Implementing technology successfully in complex health care ecosystems often comprised of large personalities and competing demands takes expert navigation skills, liberal doses of good humor, a keen sense of observation and refreshing honesty. Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic response, Hilary’s team supported the design and delivery multiple digital health tools, including a custom-built mass immunization platform that helped the province of BC achieve a vaccination rate of over 90%.
Hilary’s career has been a serendipitous adventure through journalism, communications and marketing, technology entrepreneurship, and project management. She is a Certified Usability Analyst (CUA), Project Management Professional (PMP), TOGAF-certified Enterprise Architect, PROSCI-certified Change Management professional and Scrum Certified Product Owner. Hilary is a patient representative on multiple provincial and national committees, including Canada’s national Health Standards Organization Technology-Enabled Health Committee, the Canadian Cancer Trials Group Supportive Care Committee and the International Foundation for Integrated Care’s Integrated Care Academy.
Endlessly curious, Hilary loves to learn, laugh, Stand Up Paddle, play on a beach, travel far and wide, and eat chocolate – not necessarily in that order.
Follow Hilary on LinkedIn!

Q. Jane Zhao
Research Associate, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada
Q. Jane Zhao is the Research Associate for ECHO at UHN, where they work between the Chronic Pain, Liver, Rheumatology, and Concussion programs. They have been working for ECHO at UHN since 2014 and bring extensive knowledge and expertise around ECHO implementation and evaluation. In 2022, they published the first ECHO paper focused on integrated care and are passionate about exploring the relationships between ECHO and the integrated care space.
Talk to them about health policy, mixed methods research, and comics.

Maria Mylopoulos
Scientist & Associate Director, The Wilson Centre and Associate Professor, Department of Paediatrics, Curriculum Scientist, Medical Education, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada
Dr. Maria Mylopoulos holds her PhD in human development and education. She is currently Scientist and Associate Director of the Wilson Centre for Research in Education, Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Curriculum Scientist in MD Education at the University of Toronto. Over the last 15 years she has successfully led a program of research aimed at understanding the development and performance of adaptive expertise in medicine, with a particular focus on identifying the ways in which expert clinicians move beyond application of their past knowledge when appropriate to address the needs of patients as well as the limits and opportunities of their own contexts. In her work, Maria uses a range of methodologies and theoretical frameworks from cognitive psychology, clinical reasoning, and the learning sciences to evolve understanding of the knowledge, capabilities and learning experiences that underpin adaptive expertise. The ultimate goal of her research is to translate this understanding to educational design that promotes the development of expert clinicians who are able to handle the complexities and challenges of the healthcare workplace.

Viola Wontor
Director, Research & Development Lead, International Labeling Group, Global Regulatory Sciences, Global Product Development, Pfizer, UK
Viola has over 15 years’ experience working across all aspects of human-centred design, research and innovation within many sectors including healthcare, finance, education, e-commerce, journalism, and media. As Research and Development Lead at Pfizer, Viola drives best-in-class innovative strategy across various business lines and product pipeline delivering innovative and connected healthcare solutions at leadership level, strategically, tactically, and operationally. Her experience covers adaptive methodologies bringing together skills from research, interaction design, service design, product, systems, and business process architecture, combined with her deep interests in psychology, ethnography, and behavioural science. She combines theory-backed and evidence-based methodologies together with creative and innovation-focused methods needed to facilitate business excellence, transform ideas, and inspire processes designed with richer diversity and deeper contextuality for more sustainable impact.
More details here:
- https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JICA-12-2021-0062/full/html
- https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JICA-01-2022-0012/full/html
- https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JICA-01-2022-0007/full/html
- Special issue link: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jica/guest-editor-speaks-about-special-issue-advancing-integrated-care-digital-health