Wed 29 Apr 2026
View event detailsRegistration and Breakfast
8:00 AM - 8:45 AM (45 mins)
Welcome from the Public Sector Network
8:45 AM - 9:00 AM (15 mins)
Welcome from the Chair : From Innovation to Impact: Building a Health System That Works—End to End
9:00 AM - 9:10 AM (10 mins)
Healthcare transformation today is less about adopting new tools and more about aligning technology, operations, and governance to deliver reliable, equitable care across the continuum. This keynote explores how health systems can move beyond fragmented innovation toward integrated, outcome-driven modernization that supports patients, clinicians, and system sustainability.
- Enabling system-wide integration by connecting hospitals, primary care, and community services through shared digital foundations
- Using data, automation, and analytics to strengthen operational resilience, patient flow, and workforce sustainability
- Embedding trust, cybersecurity, privacy, and responsible AI into healthcare modernization efforts
- Scaling proven solutions beyond pilots to deliver measurable clinical, operational, and patient experience outcomes\
Cut the Cord: Redefining Surgical Care Through Remote Robotics in Ontario
9:10 AM - 9:30 AM (20 mins)
Ontario is entering a new era of surgical care. Unity Health Toronto is leading Canada’s first “Cut the Cord” remote robotic surgery program — enabling expert surgeons to operate on patients located hundreds of kilometres away, expand access to care beyond specialized urban centres, and make care safe and minimally invasive. This keynote explores how remote robotics will reshape surgical systems, improve patient outcomes, and strengthen Ontario’s health system capacity.
- Breaking geographic barriers: How remote robotic surgery connects patients in underserved and rural communities to world-class surgical expertise.
- From pilot to system change: Scaling Canada’s first remote robotics program into a sustainable, province-wide model of care.
- Building the digital surgical backbone: The infrastructure, connectivity, and clinical integration required to safely deliver surgery at a distance.
- Safety, trust, and performance: Embedding clinical governance, cybersecurity, patient safety, and quality assurance into next-generation surgical innovation.
Beyond the Hype: AI, Digital Twins, and the Next Healthcare Revolution
9:30 AM - 9:50 AM (20 mins)
This keynote explores how healthcare leaders worldwide are moving past pilots and hype to operationalize AI and digital twin technologies at scale. Attendees will gain insights into the breakthroughs reshaping diagnostics, hospital operations, and patient outcomes.
- Real-world examples of digital twin applications in hospital operations and patient flow.
- How AI is transforming diagnostics, predictive analytics, and personalized care.
- Lessons from Europe and Asia in scaling advanced digital health tools.
- Ethical and governance frameworks needed to ensure trust in disruptive technologies.
Breaking Silos in Mental Health : From Smarter Diagnostics to Mental Health Integration
9:50 AM - 10:10 AM (20 mins)
Artificial intelligence and digital platforms are moving from pilots to practice, reshaping everyday care. This session highlights how AI improves diagnostics and documentation while showcasing UHN and CAMH’s digital collaboration to expand access to mental health services.
- Smarter care delivery: AI scribes and diagnostics improving accuracy, efficiency, and clinician capacity.
- Seamless referrals: Digital platforms linking UHN and CAMH to streamline patient transitions.
- Connected records & virtual tools: Interoperable EHRs, telepsychiatry, and secure data sharing for continuity of care.
- Scalable models: Using predictive analytics and collaboration as a blueprint for province-wide integration.
How to Achieve Interoperability Across Ontario’s Health Systems
10:10 AM - 10:30 AM (20 mins)
Despite major digital investments, Ontario’s healthcare system still struggles with fragmentation that slows care and limits coordination. Bridging these gaps requires smarter integration—not full replacement—of systems, supported by aligned strategies and AI-enabled insights.
This session will show how you can modernize infrastructure and improve decision-making by creating a more connected, intelligent healthcare ecosystem.
- Optimize legacy systems to enable interoperability across providers
- Unlock AI-powered insights to drive faster, more accurate clinical decisions
- Align digital strategies across health regions to scale integration efforts
- Reduce data silos to enable real-time, patient-centered care
- Improve collaboration across care teams with shared digital infrastructure
The Empathetic Algorithm: Redefining Patient Connection in the Age of AI
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM (30 mins)
Artificial intelligence is transforming how clinicians understand, communicate with, and care for patients — but empathy must remain at the heart of every interaction. This keynote explores how Ontario’s hospitals are integrating AI tools that enhance, not replace, human connection — creating care experiences that are intelligent, inclusive, and deeply personal.
- AI with a Human Touch: How predictive models and conversational AI can enhance empathy, not automate it away.
- Personalized Care Journeys: Leveraging real-time data to tailor care pathways, anticipate needs, and improve outcomes.
- Trust by Design: Embedding transparency, consent, and explainability into patient-facing AI systems.
- The New Partnership: Reimagining the clinician–patient relationship as a collaboration between human judgment and machine insight.
Morning Tea
11:00 AM - 11:40 AM (40 mins)
Welcome from Track Chair
11:40 AM - 11:50 AM (10 mins)
Welcome from Track Chair
11:40 AM - 11:50 AM (10 mins)
Welcome from Track Chair
11:40 AM - 11:50 AM (10 mins)
Hybrid Care in Practice: Connecting Digital Access and In-Person Care
11:50 AM - 12:10 PM (20 mins)
Healthcare is moving beyond “virtual-only” models to hybrid care, where patients move seamlessly between digital and in-person touchpoints. This session explores how blended models improve access, efficiency, and patient satisfaction.
- How hybrid models overcome gaps left by virtual-only approaches.
- Scaling hybrid care across Ontario Health Teams and communities.
- The impact of hybrid delivery on staffing, infrastructure, and resource allocation.
- Global lessons on integrating digital and physical care environments.
From Portals to Power: Giving Patients the Driver’s Seat in Digital Health
11:50 AM - 12:10 PM (20 mins)
Digital portals, secure messaging, and self-management tools are shifting the balance of power toward patients. This keynote explores how empowering patients improves outcomes, engagement, and continuity of care.
- Expanding patient access to health records, labs, and appointments.
- Secure messaging and remote engagement for stronger patient-provider relationships.
- Encouraging active participation in chronic condition management.
- How patient-centered design leads to better trust and adoption.
When Systems Fail, Care Stops: Why Cybersecurity Is Now a Patient Safety Issue
11:50 AM - 12:10 PM (20 mins)
As healthcare becomes increasingly digital, protecting sensitive data and critical systems is a life-or-death responsibility. This session dives into how Zero Trust frameworks and cyber resilience strategies are reshaping healthcare security.
- Why Zero Trust is essential for protecting patient data and digital platforms.
- Securing mission-critical hospital and primary care systems.
- Embedding cybersecurity in every layer of digital health adoption.
- Preparing for tomorrow’s threats in an era of hyper-connectivity.
Strengthening Data Governance to Enable Safer, Smarter Care
12:10 PM - 12:30 PM (20 mins)
As data becomes central to care delivery and policy, strong governance is essential to safeguard privacy and maintain trust. This session explores how healthcare organizations are building frameworks that ensure data is accurate, secure, and used responsibly.
This session will help you apply new approaches on how you can strengthen data integrity, manage risk, and embed privacy into every stage of the data lifecycle.
- Build data governance structures that support innovation and accountability
- Align privacy frameworks with public expectations and legal standards
- Enable data sharing without compromising protection
- Foster a culture of responsibility across data-driven teams
Digital Doppelgängers: Using AI and Twins to Personalize Care Journeys
12:10 PM - 12:30 PM (20 mins)
Digital twin and AI technologies are bringing new levels of personalization to healthcare by simulating patient journeys and predicting outcomes. This session explores how vendors and providers are partnering to make tailored, patient-centered care a reality.
- How digital twins can simulate patient journeys for proactive care planning.
- AI-driven personalization for chronic disease management and wellness.
- Practical examples of tailoring care plans to individual patient needs.
- The vendor–provider partnership model that makes innovation scalable.
AI and Machine Learning for Security Threat Identification
12:10 PM - 12:30 PM (20 mins)
Healthcare organizations are high-value targets, but with limited cybersecurity staff and rising threats, reacting fast enough is a growing challenge. Attackers are now using AI to outpace traditional defenses, putting patient data and critical systems at greater risk.
This session will show how AI and ML systems can help healthcare teams detect, respond to, and contain threats faster by automating actions across complex digital environments—protecting both clinical operations and patient trust.
- Improve threat detection speed and precision using AI-powered analysis
- Reduce incident response times from hours to seconds with intelligent automation
- Adapt to AI-enabled threats that target healthcare systems and data
- Deploy agentic AI to operate autonomously and protect networks in real time
- Build a resilient cybersecurity posture without increasing staff load
Team-Based Primary Care 2.0 : Scaling Access Without Burnout
12:30 PM - 1:00 PM (30 mins)
Ontario’s front-door push hinges on high-functioning, digitally enabled primary care teams. This session zeroes in on clinic-level playbooks—workflow, staffing, and tech—that expand same/next-day access without leaning on centralized queues.
- Clinic operating models that add capacity (advanced access, pooled triage, panel management).
- The enabling stack: asynchronous messaging, eConsult/eReferral (non-waitlist use), RPM, and care navigation.
- Staffing & scope: maximizing RNs, NPs, pharmacists, and allied roles with decision support.
- Measuring what matters: time-to-appointment, continuity, equity, and clinician well-being.
Breaking Barriers: Designing Tech for Equity and Access in Every Community
12:30 PM - 12:59 PM (29 mins)
Technology must close, not widen, the healthcare equity gap. This panel examines how Ontario and global leaders are using digital tools to expand access and ensure culturally safe care.
- Designing digital health platforms with equity and inclusivity in mind.
- Expanding services to rural, Indigenous, and underserved populations.
- Addressing affordability, accessibility, and digital literacy.
- Measuring outcomes: when technology reduces inequities in patient experience.
The Cyber Shield in Action: Securing Ontario’s Healthcare Nervous System
12:30 PM - 1:00 PM (30 mins)
Cybersecurity has become a frontline priority as Ontario’s healthcare system becomes more interconnected. This panel will discuss how CIOs, CISOs, and government leaders are fortifying defenses across hospitals, public health, and digital platforms.
- Implementing provincial strategies to strengthen healthcare cyber resilience.
- Protecting central wait list systems, EHRs, and integrated care platforms.
- Collaboration between hospitals, public health, and government to address threats.
- Balancing the pace of innovation with security, compliance, and patient trust.
Lunch and Networking
1:00 PM - 2:10 PM (70 mins)
Welcome Back from Chair
2:10 PM - 2:20 PM (10 mins)
Welcome Back from Chair
2:10 PM - 2:20 PM (10 mins)
Welcome Back from Chair
2:10 PM - 2:20 PM (10 mins)
The Holy Grail of Healthcare: Chasing One Patient, One Record
2:20 PM - 2:40 PM (20 mins)
Ontario’s pursuit of a unified patient record is one of the most ambitious projects in healthcare. This session explores why achieving full interoperability is both elusive and essential.
- Overcoming silos between hospitals, primary care, and community providers.
- Ontario’s roadmap for building a connected patient record.
- Benefits for clinicians: efficiency, safety, and reduced duplication.
- Benefits for patients: seamless experiences and greater empowerment.
Command Centres for Care — Real-Time Operations for Safer, Faster Hospitals
2:20 PM - 2:40 PM (20 mins)
Hospitals are standing up “mission control” to orchestrate beds, diagnostics, transfers, and discharge in real time. This keynote translates command-centre theory into day-to-day practice and shows how it complements analytics, digital twins, and patient-experience work elsewhere in the program.
- From dashboards to decisions: alerting, escalation pathways, and standard work at the elbow.
- Flow science: predicted admits/discharges, boarding risk, and coordinated surge playbooks.
- Integrations that matter: EHR events, RTLS, staffing, transport, imaging, and facilities data.
- Outcomes to track: length of stay, time-to-inpatient bed, cancelled procedures, and patient/staff experience.
Invisible Enemies: How to Hunt Threats Before They Strike
2:20 PM - 2:40 PM (20 mins)
Healthcare organizations can’t afford to wait for the next breach — proactive threat-hunting is now essential. This session explores how hospitals and health systems are using AI-driven analytics and behavioral monitoring to detect and neutralize attacks before they cause harm.
- Leveraging AI and behavioral analytics to spot unusual patterns before damage occurs.
- How threat-hunting teams proactively uncover hidden risks in hospital networks.
- Moving from reactive incident response to predictive cyber defense.
- Case studies of healthcare organizations that stopped breaches before patient safety was at risk.
How to Automate Clinical Documentation Across Enterprise Systems Without Compromising Accuracy
2:40 PM - 3:00 PM (20 mins)
AI is transforming how clinicians document care, but unlocking the full potential of automated note-taking means integrating applications across complex enterprise systems. Large-scale adoption requires careful alignment with clinical workflows, privacy frameworks, and digital infrastructure. This session will explore:
- Advance automation in clinical documentation to reduce administrative burden
- Expand AI app use beyond family medicine into enterprise-wide care settings
- Improve adoption across health networks through seamless system integration
- Examine risks and legal considerations from recent real-world implementations
- Align automation efforts with privacy, compliance, and clinical governance standards
Elevating Patient Experience with Integrated Digital Engagement and Support
2:40 PM - 3:00 PM (20 mins)
Healthcare delivery increasingly depends on seamless digital and human touchpoints to meet patient expectations for access, clarity, and continuity of care. Organizations that optimize engagement across channels can reduce friction, increase satisfaction, and strengthen outcomes.
This session will show how your health system can integrate digital engagement, support services, and analytics to deliver compassionate, connected patient experiences that work for clinicians and citizens alike.
- Improve access by aligning digital tools with patient needs across the care journey
- Enhance communication by standardizing messaging and real‑time responses
- Strengthen continuity of care with integrated data and coordinated workflows
- Reduce administrative burden by automating routine interactions and follow‑ups
- Empower staff with insights to personalize engagement and anticipate patient needs
How to Secure Machine Identities in Healthcare Without Slowing Digital Operations
2:40 PM - 3:00 PM (20 mins)
APIs, service accounts, and automated tools now outnumber human users in healthcare systems—yet they often operate without proper oversight. These non-human identities power critical functions but also create blind spots that threat actors can exploit.
This session will show how to close this growing security gap by securing machine identities across your healthcare infrastructure—without disrupting care or operational efficiency.
- Identify where machine identities exist across clinical and operational systems
- Reduce risk by enforcing access controls for non-human users
- Prevent misuse of APIs and automation tools in digital health workflows
- Strengthen visibility across digital systems to detect and contain threats
- Balance innovation with cybersecurity to protect patient trust
Beyond Implementation: Measuring Digital Maturity, Data Value & AI Readiness in Ontario Healthcare
3:00 PM - 3:20 PM (20 mins)
Ontario’s health system is rapidly scaling digital and AI innovation, but progress must be measured by value, not adoption. This keynote shows how maturity frameworks and data governance help hospitals align investments, strengthen decisions, and improve patient outcomes.
- Measuring Digital & AI Value: Defining system-wide metrics that connect digital investment to outcomes, access, and efficiency.
- Advancing Digital & Data Maturity: Using provincial frameworks to assess readiness, close gaps, and guide aligned investment.
- Data Governance as the Foundation: Ensuring data quality, integration, and stewardship to enable trusted analytics and AI.
- From Technology to Impact: Turning deployments into measurable improvements in patient experience, workforce workflows, and system performance.
The Digital Care Continuum: Connecting Frontlines, Facilities, and Public Health Intelligence
3:00 PM - 3:20 PM (20 mins)
Ontario’s healthcare system is shifting toward a seamlessly connected ecosystem where digital intelligence links hospitals, community care, and public health. This keynote explores how data integration and real-time insights can empower providers, optimize operations, and strengthen the province’s capacity to deliver coordinated, patient-centered care.
- Bridging the Digital Divide in Care Delivery: How to integrate hospital, primary, and community data into a single, trusted information ecosystem.
- Operational Intelligence in Real Time: Using digital platforms to align staffing, capacity, and clinical resources with emerging population needs.
- Empowering Frontline Providers: Tools and interoperability frameworks that translate data into actionable insights at the point of care.
- From Reactive to Predictive: Leveraging analytics and AI to anticipate surges, manage chronic conditions, and guide policy.
Guardrails for the Future: Governing AI Risk in Ontario’s Health System
2:50 PM - 3:10 PM (20 mins)
As artificial intelligence reshapes how hospitals diagnose, triage, and manage operations, it also expands the cyber and ethical attack surface. This keynote explores how Ontario’s healthcare leaders are developing governance frameworks to ensure AI adoption remains secure, compliant, and trustworthy — from algorithm transparency to third-party oversight and data integrity.
- AI’s Double-Edged Sword: Understanding how AI can both enhance and endanger cybersecurity in healthcare environments.
- Governance by Design: Building PHIPA-compliant and risk-aware frameworks for AI deployment across hospitals and vendors.
- Third-Party Trust: Managing cybersecurity risks in AI supply chains, data partnerships, and cloud ecosystems.
- Future-Proofing Compliance: Aligning AI governance with Ontario Health’s cybersecurity directives and emerging national standards.
Connecting the Dots: Accelerating Healthcare Intelligence with Integrated Analytics
3:10 PM - 3:29 PM (19 mins)
Health organizations are working with more data than ever—but connecting insights across structured records and unstructured narratives remains a major challenge. Without the right tools, it’s difficult to surface relationships, assess risk, or act at scale.
This session will show how to unify diverse data, reveal hidden connections, and build repeatable workflows that drive smarter investigations and decisions.
- Unify structured and unstructured data to uncover deeper patterns
- Extract and link key entities across systems using natural language processing
- Assess risk using predictive models to prioritize high-impact actions
- Automate investigative workflows to improve efficiency and consistency
- Operationalize insights across compliance, monitoring, and research functions
How to Use AI-Ready Data to Improve Patient Experience and Clinician Efficiency
3:10 PM - 3:30 PM (20 mins)
Healthcare teams are under pressure to deliver more personalized care while reducing administrative burden—and AI can help. But without clean, connected, and context-rich data, AI tools often fall short of their promise.
This session will show how to prepare your data to power AI and ML tools that support clinicians, enhance patient interactions, and scale impact across the system.
- Avoid common data pitfalls that stall GenAI and AI agent adoption
- Prepare clinical and operational data for safe, scalable AI use
- Improve decision-making by fueling AI with trusted, context-rich data
- Accelerate deployment with real-world examples of AI-ready environments
- Empower care teams with AI tools that actually reduce workload
Embracing the Benefits of AI and Overcoming Fear
3:10 PM - 3:30 PM (20 mins)
AI is transforming how healthcare organizations defend against cyber threats, but its use must be balanced with privacy, transparency, and clinical responsibility. As reliance on automation grows, so does the need to ensure patients and staff trust how these technologies are deployed.
This session will show how you can apply AI to strengthen cybersecurity while maintaining ethical standards, oversight, and confidence across your healthcare environment.
- Leverage AI to enhance cyber resilience and protect clinical systems
- Address patient and staff concerns around data privacy and ethical use
- Build trust through transparency, accountability, and responsible deployment
- Balance automation with human oversight in high-risk security environments
From Discovery to Global Impact: Commercializing Innovation and Transforming Care at UHN
3:30 PM - 3:50 PM (20 mins)
At University Health Network, innovation is more than research — it’s about translating breakthroughs into solutions that reach patients worldwide. This session explores how commercialization, patient experience, and technology together transform healthcare—locally and globally.
- The Innovation Pipeline: How UHN moves discoveries from lab to market, ensuring ideas become tangible solutions that improve patient care.
- A Patient’s Perspective: Personal reflections on how UHN’s technological advancements directly impacted his health journey — and what that means for scaling innovation with empathy.
- Commercialization with Purpose: Strategies for building partnerships, licensing models, and platforms that expand UHN’s innovations to global healthcare systems.
- Global Transformation, Local Impact: Ensuring innovations remain equitable and accessible while contributing to a worldwide shift in how healthcare is delivered.
From Numbers to Narratives — How Data Drives Human-Centered Care
3:30 PM - 3:50 PM (20 mins)
Behind every data point is a patient story. This keynote explores how analytics can move beyond dashboards to transform the lived experience of patients and families. By blending predictive insights with compassionate care, Ontario is redefining what it means to deliver truly patient-centered healthcare.
- Seeing the unseen: Using real-time analytics to spot bottlenecks in patient flow and reduce stress in waiting rooms and wards.
- Personalized journeys: How predictive models tailor treatments, anticipate risks, and improve outcomes for diverse patient populations.
- Voices in the data: Capturing patient-reported outcomes and satisfaction to guide care design and quality improvements.
- Closing the loop: Turning analytics into bedside action so patients and families feel the benefit immediately, not months later.
Anatomy of a Breach: What Hackers Teach Us About Ourselves
3:30 PM - 3:50 PM (20 mins)
Every cyber breach leaves lessons behind. This case study walks through a real-world healthcare breach and how it reshaped organizational resilience.
- Anatomy of a healthcare cyberattack and immediate response.
- Containment and recovery strategies that worked.
- Lessons learned for stronger system-wide defenses.
- Turning crises into opportunities for greater resilience.
No Wrong Door: The Access OS — Engineering Ontario’s Regional Central Waitlist
3:50 PM - 4:20 PM (30 mins)
Ontario is standing up a single, regional “Access OS” that routes patients to the right care through one queue with many front doors. This session gets into the build/run/secure realities: the tech stack, risk controls, hospital readiness, and what this shift means day-to-day for clinicians and patients.
- Tech & Data Layer: Central intake & eReferral, scheduling orchestration, FHIR APIs across multiple EHRs, AI-assisted triage, consent & identity (OIDC/OAuth), patient status via portals/Health811.
- Risk & Trust Controls: PHIPA by design, queue integrity (anti-gaming), bias testing in prioritization models, cyber/downtime playbooks, audit trails and transparency dashboards.
- Hospital Readiness: Standardized referral pathways, SLOs/SLAs for access times, capacity & surge triggers, clinic change management and command-centre operations, shared metrics (time-to-appointment, equity, outcomes).
- Impact on People: For doctors—single entry point, fewer faxes/callbacks, triage clarity, real-time queue visibility; for patients—plain-language status and timelines, fair access across regions, navigation supports and accessibility options.
Healing by Design — Space, Flow, and Family-Centered Care at Scale
3:50 PM - 4:20 PM (30 mins)
How architecture, layout, and operational design shape outcomes and experience and how IO’s delivery models turn evidence-based concepts into large-scale reality.
- Flow & wayfinding: Layouts that reduce stress and wait—clear sightlines, intuitive routes, decentralized check-in, family zones, and real-time wayfinding.
- Sensory & safety: Light, acoustics, privacy, infection-control adjacencies; designing rooms and common spaces that calm, protect, and include families.
- Smart-enabled spaces: RTLS/occupancy analytics, digital signage, nurse call, and “building OS” layers that adapt staffing and cleaning, and surface delays before patients feel them.
- From vision to delivery: How Infrastructure Ontario’s standards, P3 models, and lifecycle planning embed evidence-based design, flexibility, and digital
The Blame Game: Who’s Accountable When Healthcare Gets Hacked?
3:50 PM - 4:20 PM (30 mins)
When a cyberattack cripples a hospital, accountability becomes as critical as recovery. This panel dives into the blurred lines of responsibility across CIOs, CISOs, clinicians, vendors, and boards — and how clear ownership of risk can strengthen resilience.
- Clarifying the roles of CIOs, CISOs, clinicians, and vendors in cyber defense.
- Lessons learned from real breaches where accountability failed.
- Building governance frameworks that define risk ownership.
- Creating a culture of shared accountability to strengthen cyber resilience.
Closing Remarks
4:20 PM - 4:30 PM (10 mins)
Closing Remarks
4:20 PM - 4:30 PM (10 mins)
Closing Remarks
4:20 PM - 4:30 PM (10 mins)
Networking Reception
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM (60 mins)