Ebook: From Insights to Action: Empowering Health

Future of Health Leadership, Informatics and Policy

Gillian STRUDWICK (Corresponding Author: Gillian Strudwick RN, PhD, FAMIA, FCAN, gillian.strudwick@camh.ca), Karim KESHAVJEE, Abbas ZAVAR, Darren LARSEN, Tasnim AHMED GUREY, Nuzhat JAHIN

Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Abstract. The 2025 Future of Health Leadership, Informatics, and Policy (FHLIP) Conference is a premier event driving healthcare transformation through digital innovation, leadership, policy advocacy and interest holder engagement. The goal of FHLIP is to catalyze the development of proactive, innovative digital health solutions capable of addressing the healthcare sector’s contemporary challenges. This is done through knowledge exchange and networking opportunities at the conference in the form of an interactive panel, keynote speaker, peer reviewed paper presentations, laptop talks, round table discussions and time set aside for traditional networking. Attendees include patient and family representatives, policy makers, healthcare providers, technology vendors, researchers, academics, students and community leaders.

Keywords. Health informatics, nursing informatics, medical informatics, health leadership, health policy, artificial intelligence, digital health

1.1. Scientific Advisory Committee

A Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) was recruited to provide strategic guidance on key aspects of the conference, including developing criteria for reviewing submissions to the conference, discussing and advising on the agenda for the conference, brainstorming potential opening and closing speakers, and participating in discussions regarding shaping the theme for the 2026 conference. Gillian Strudwick served as the Chair of the SAC, leading its initiatives with expertise and vision. Nuzhat Jahin contributed to the organization and coordination of the SAC. The SAC was composed of researchers, clinicians, administrators, health system leaders, policy experts, patient/family members and educators. Members of the SAC include the following individuals: Wendy Nelson, Helen Edwards, Gillian Strudwick, Elizabeth Borycki, Raza Abidi, Ben King, Jennifer Tin, Abbas Zavar, Alireza Khatami, Angela Copeland, Christopher Sulway, Aviv Shachak, Shez Daya, Simon Ling, Darren Larsen, Helen Angus, Muhammad Mamdani, Peter Elkin, Masooma Hassan, Roya Farzan, Pooyeh Graili, Anita Lanning, Paula Oreklin, Diana Ermel, Maggie Keresteci, Razieh Poorandy.

1.2. Organizing Committee

The Organizing Committee played a pivotal role in ensuring the seamless planning, coordination, and execution of the event. Comprising a dynamic team of Master of Health Informatics (MHI) students, faculty members, and professional staff, this committee oversaw critical aspects of conference management. These responsibilities include logistics planning, venue selection, media coordination, technology support, food and beverage arrangements, and the overall facilitation of event workflows. For FHLIP 2025, the committee achieved a significant milestone by successfully engaging with external organizations to secure sponsorships. This marks the first time that the committee has garnered sponsorship specifically dedicated to supporting the conference’s reception event – a dedicated networking opportunity for attendees to connect with industry leaders. This achievement highlights the committee’s strategic outreach efforts, negotiation capabilities, and capacity to foster valuable partnerships. The committee operates with a program management approach, ensuring that every element of the conference—from logistical workflows to time-sensitive deliverables—is executed smoothly and on schedule. Members of the Organizing Committee include Karim Keshavjee (Conference Chair), Abbas Zavar (Executive Director), Darren Larsen (Organizing Chair), and Tasnim Ahmed Gurey (Organizing Coordinator).

2. Conclusion

With the current pressures within the healthcare system, and the potential for technology to support in the creation of solutions to these problems, there is no more important time than now to gather individuals and interest holders who can collectively make a difference in this space.

YouTube has become a common platform for sharing difficult experiences and sensitive information, including suicide-related thoughts and behaviors. This study analyzes YouTube videos and their comments using topic modeling to explore the common themes discussed within the online community. Our findings show that these videos and comments not only focus on personal stories but also provide encouragement and healthcare-related information, highlighting social media’s role in health promotion and peer support. Given that millions of people use various social media platforms to discuss a wide range of topics, these platforms serve as a rich source of data. As such, YouTube videos and comments offer health services researchers a valuable source of public opinion data, providing insights into societal attitudes and perceptions that may differ from those collected through traditional research methods.

Suicide prevention apps have the potential to support at-risk individuals in the community; however, users are often uninformed about the privacy implications of mobile app use. To address this issue, privacy labels were introduced to app stores. This study assessed the comprehensiveness of suicide prevention app privacy policies and the accuracy of app store privacy labels. Privacy policies were often missing, written at a college-level, average over 1600 words, and were incomplete in reporting privacy and security protections. Privacy labels accurately conveyed data use in most apps but had more discrepancies for data types. These findings indicate the minimal change in digital health privacy policy practices.

Guided by interviews with end-users and in collaboration with lived-experience advisors, the Fairness Dashboard is being co-designed to promote the standardized and responsible utilization of sociodemographic data in statistical and machine learning models. This initiative aims to mitigate the potential for harm and to advance the equitable and compassionate interpretation of knowledge derived from Artificial Intelligence.

Digital health data is being increasingly collected and used in the field of suicide prevention and care, but the extent to which knowledge users are engaged in these initiatives is unclear. We build on previous work by conducting a secondary analysis of rapid review data, to describe knowledge user perspectives, the level of engagement and resulting outputs.

Recent years have been marked by technological growth in the healthcare sectors without the necessary support to guide users towards effective digital tool utilization. To address this challenge, the Digital Navigator role was established. This paper will provide a brief overview of the role and describe the key ways in which it lays a foundation for the success of digital health interventions.

Co-design is an increasingly adopted approach in digital health to develop innovations that are more relevant and effective. Engaging people with lived/living experience at the outset is often recommended to maximize the value of co-design. This paper reports on the co-design of the co-design of a Patient Journey Dashboard—an approach where both the co-design process and dashboard are co-designed with patient partners from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. There were challenges navigating the process at first; however, collectively embracing the messiness allowed for a meaningful engagement experience.

Recent policy recommendations on the use of health data call for an understanding of privacy experiences and perspectives. A secondary analysis of a national survey was conducted to characterize public experiences views on digital health (n=2010). This study found that 69.8% of participants are unaware of health privacy laws yet 71.8% were confident in protecting their online privacy. These variables were significantly associated with beliefs that their privacy was adequately protected. This study reinforces the discourse that public engagement in building awareness of the law and confidence in data protection will be critical in fostering trust in health privacy safeguards.

Health systems globally are struggling with. common issues such as access, wait times, and the delivery of new models of care such as team-based care. While it has been argued that addressing our health crisis involves better implementation of known solutions, we argue that mindset is an overly simplified representation of health system implementation. In this paper we posit that the non-linear interactive nature of health systems makes implementation challenging. Addressing that challenge requires us to conceptualize health system implementation as an interacting system of systems that evolve over time.

Canada’s healthcare system is undergoing rapid technological changes, alongside increasing demand for services, clinician burnout, and rising costs. Achieving interoperability between primary care electronic medical records (EMRs) is critical to addressing these challenges by enabling real-time data sharing and informed decision-making. This study analyzes stakeholder requirements for interoperability, utilizing an adapted House of Quality matrix to map the contributions needed from healthcare providers, vendors, government, researchers, and technology deployment partners. The findings emphasize the necessity of cross-sector collaboration, with vendors playing a central role in providing technological solutions and providers and the government ensuring alignment with clinical standards and policies. The study highlights the importance of coordinated governance and identifies key areas for stakeholder collaboration to drive value for all interest holders in the healthcare ecosystem.

OntarioMD (OMD), a leader in digital health, focuses on harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to reduce administrative burden and enhance patient care in primary care. Building on 20 years of digital health experience, OMD has established an AI implementation strategy centred on collaboration and education. This multipronged strategy leads to a sustainable, effective and safe adoption of AI through collaboration with healthcare providers, patients, policymakers, technology vendors, and regulatory bodies by offering implementation toolkits and change management support to clinicians and fostering a culture of continuous learning, ensuring clinicians and patients are well-versed in AI. They are equipped with the necessary knowledge to leverage the AI-enabled tools. The success of the AI scribe pilots in Ontario exemplifies the value of this AI implementation strategy. Clinicians who participated in the pilot reported saving almost 4 hours per week on documentation by using AI scribes, and both primary care providers and patients reported improved engagement and rapport.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies become more integrated into clinical settings to optimize care, healthcare professionals (HCPs) will need to become more adept in responsibly using these novel technologies to augment patient care. A qualitative study, consisting of semi-structured interviews was conducted to explore the informational needs of HCPs and gaps in current AI education. Participants, consisting of educators and learners, were recruited from AI programs. The interview data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Three themes were identified, addressing the need for (1) developing a longitudinal AI curriculum to transform the mindset, skillset, and toolset of providers, (2) cultivating an active learning approach to foster knowledge mobilization and optimize the use of AI tools in the provision of care, and (3) fostering a multidisciplinary approach to AI curriculum design is essential to promote collaborative efforts among HCPs in implementing AI tools. This study identified five key recommendations to prepare HCPs with the knowledge and skills necessary for an AI-driven future.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation in public health and development organizations worldwide such as BRAC Health Program (BHP). Key success factors included early adoption of digital collaboration tools, systematic workforce training, and a phased implementation approach. The experiences of BHP offer insights that can be insightful for other nations.

The PAT Project aims to revolutionize preventive healthcare in Canada by shifting focus from reactive treatment to proactive prevention. It integrates validated assessment tools and a dynamic knowledge base that maps risk factors to diseases, enabling personalized prevention prescription. By enriching EMR systems with comprehensive data, the project empowers both patients and clinicians to take early action, reducing the burden of chronic diseases. The project’s multidisciplinary approach covers 16 key health domains, and its implementation strategy involves AI-driven solutions to streamline research into clinical practice, promoting citizen empowerment and addressing health inequities.

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) poses a significant healthcare challenge in Kenya, with about 14,000 new cases annually. Fragmented data collection hampers patient management, research, and resource allocation. This paper proposes a framework for a centralized SCD registry in Kenya, integrating with existing systems like KenyaEMR. Through stakeholder engagement and systematic design, we outline methods, system design, implementation strategies, and success metrics. The solution aims to enhance patient care, support research, and inform policy development.

Access to primary healthcare remains a critical challenge in Africa, particularly in underserved areas. This paper evaluates the mutti+ digital health (MDH) solution—a pharmacy-first model providing outpatient services through community pharmacies for 14 prevalent diseases. Using system dynamics modeling, we analyzed three policy options to ensure sustainability, focusing on leadership and policy alignment. Our model identified critical factors affecting sustainability, such as patient adoption, operational costs, NPS, and service utilization rates.

Diagnosing pulmonary embolism (PE) often requires specialized expertise in interpreting x-rays and radiographic images, resources that are mostly limited in rural settings. This paper explores the development of an electronic health record (EHR) system and an AI-based clinical decision support system (CDSS) to aid in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE) in rural Northern Ontario. It assesses potential challenges with implementing these digital health technologies and provides mitigating strategies.

Community pharmacies in Ghana are essential healthcare access points but often focus only on dispensing medications, neglecting broader patient-centered care. This study identifies 21 key drivers of patient satisfaction through stakeholder engagement and proposes a three-part strategy to transform these pharmacies into healthcare hubs. The strategy integrates a digital health platform, a pharmacy performance assessment tool, and a cleaning and hygiene checklist to enhance service quality, accessibility, product availability, and patient engagement. By addressing challenges like digital literacy, infrastructure limitations, and staff training, this work provides insights for sustainable improvement and scalability in low-resource settings.

Patient access to health records is increasingly recognized as a fundamental right to empower individuals and improve healthcare continuity. A comprehensive assessment tool was developed to evaluate dimensions of jurisdictional capacity, the extent of patient access, and international comparisons. We identified 10 key requirements for facilitating patient access to their health records. This study presents a framework for evaluating and enhancing patient access, though there remains a need to include patient experiences for a fuller picture in future research.

Clinical decision support tools such as Evidence2Practice Ontario (E2P) can be an effective way to reduce the 17-year gap between clinical innovation and its use in practice. To enhance the interoperability and scalability of E2P we propose leveraging the pan-Canadian Health Application Lightweight Protocol (HALO) framework. Public and private developers could be informed by E2P as the initial use case to test the capability of HALO to support clinical decision support tools.

Pediatric trauma remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, with the transition from hospital to home posing significant challenges for families. SafeJourney, a digital companion, addresses these gaps by empowering families and coordinating care during the critical post-discharge period. Developed with input from diverse stakeholders, SafeJourney integrates digital tools such as a virtual companion, care dashboards, symptom tracking, educational resources, and telehealth integration. This innovative tool demonstrates the potential to transform post-discharge care by reducing emergency department visits and readmissions while enhancing family confidence and healthcare outcomes.

Successful expansion and integration of digital health technologies requires the support of organized bodies to mobilize research and accelerate spread and scalability. This Laptop Talk will present the findings of an environmental scan outlining international organizations active in the digital health innovation space.

The rapid growth of mobile health (mHealth) applications underscores the pressing need for robust evaluation platforms that ensure quality, efficacy, and stakeholder alignment. This paper introduces a quantitative, evidence-based framework that addresses these gaps through dynamic attribute weighting and multi-criteria decision analysis. The platform integrates methodologies such as CRITIC-TOPSIS and AI-driven attribute prioritization, validated through systematic reviews and expert analyses. Preliminary evaluations demonstrate potential for generating actionable insights tailored to diverse mHealth applications and stakeholder needs. Future work includes detailed literature reviews, platform development and real-life use case deployment to refine its applicability and impact.