Healthcare Innovation Showcase

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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, including AI-enabled tools—that expand same/next-day access without leaning on centralized queues.

• Clinic operating models that add capacity (advanced access, pooled triage, panel management, and AI-assisted demand forecasting).
• The enabling stack: asynchronous messaging, AI-enabled triage, eConsult/eReferral (non-waitlist use), RPM, and care navigation.
• Staffing & scope: maximizing RNs, NPs, pharmacists, and allied roles with AI-supported decision support.
• Measuring what matters: time-to-appointment, continuity, equity, clinician well-being, and AI-driven insights for operational improvement.

Nicole Thomson

Vice President of Quality, Research & Patient Experience, Waterloo Regional Health Network

Dr. Chandi Chandrasena

Chief Medical Officer, OntarioMD

Payal Agarwal

Provincial Clinical Lead, Digital Health, Ontario Health

Technology must close, not widen, the healthcare equity gap. This panel examines how Ontario and global leaders are using digital tools and AI-enabled solutions to expand access and ensure culturally safe, inclusive care across diverse communities.

• Designing digital health and AI-enabled platforms with equity and inclusivity in mind.
• Expanding services to rural, Indigenous, and underserved populations through virtual care, remote monitoring, and intelligent triage tools.
• Addressing affordability, accessibility, and digital literacy to ensure equitable adoption of digital and AI-powered healthcare services.
• Measuring outcomes: when technology and AI-driven insights reduce inequities in patient access and experience.

Rochelle Reid

Chief Health Equity Officer, Hamilton Health Sciences

Dan Harren

Director, Digital Acceleration and Initiatives, Centre for Addition and Mental Health

Karim Jessa

Chief Medical Information Officer, The Hospital for Sick Children

Cybersecurity has become a frontline priority as Ontario’s healthcare system becomes more interconnected and increasingly supported by digital and AI-enabled technologies. 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, including safeguards for emerging AI-enabled systems.
• Protecting central wait list systems, EHRs, AI-supported clinical tools, and integrated care platforms.
• Collaboration between hospitals, public health, and government to address evolving cyber and AI-related threats.
• Balancing the pace of innovation—including AI adoption—with security, compliance, and patient trust.

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.

As the clinical complexity and acuity of long-term care residents continue to rise, effective placement and transition processes are increasingly critical to maintaining continuity of care across the health system. Drawing on Baycrest’s experience as a specialized care provider, this session explores how greater system coordination, shared visibility, and digitally enabled decision-making can strengthen long-term care placement and improve patient outcomes.

• How current long-term care placement workflows function at the clinical and operational level, and where opportunities exist to enhance coordination and continuity of care
• The impact of timely, well-matched placements on patient safety, clinical outcomes, and experience across the hospital-to-LTC transition
• Why shared system visibility into capacity, acuity, and readiness can support more informed, patient-centred placement decisions
• How emerging digital and data-driven approaches could enable a more integrated, responsive long-term care system over time

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

As artificial intelligence reshapes how health care engages with data and information, it also expands the cyber and ethical attack surface. This keynote explores how Ontario’s health care 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 health care environments
• Governance by Design: Building PHIPA-compliant and risk-aware frameworks for AI deployment across health care systems
• Third-Party Trust: Managing cyber security risks in AI supply chains, data partnerships, and cloud ecosystems
• Future-Proofing Compliance: Aligning AI governance with Ontario Health’s cyber security directives and emerging national standards

At University Health Network, innovation is more than research — it’s about translating breakthroughs into solutions that reach patients worldwide. Drawing from his experience advancing commercialization of UHN’s digital, data, and AI-driven discoveries, and his own journey as a patient who has benefitted from these technologies, Steve Schudlo offers a unique perspective. This session explores how the intersection of commercialization, patient experience, and technological advancement can transform healthcare delivery 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.

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.

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.

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 in an increasingly digital and AI-enabled health system.

• Tech & Data Layer: Central intake & eReferral, scheduling orchestration, FHIR APIs across multiple EHRs, AI-assisted triage and demand forecasting, consent & identity (OIDC/OAuth), patient status via portals/Health811.
• Risk & Trust Controls: PHIPA by design, queue integrity (anti-gaming), bias testing and governance for AI-supported prioritization models, cyber/downtime playbooks, audit trails and transparency dashboards.
• Hospital Readiness: Standardized referral pathways, SLOs/SLAs for access times, AI-informed capacity planning and 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, AI-assisted triage clarity, real-time queue visibility; for patients—plain-language status and timelines, fair access across regions, navigation supports and accessibility options.

Alexis Villa

Executive Director, Digital Health Strategy and Clinical Adoption, University Health Network

Noelle Coombe

Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Digital Health, The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Brendan Kwolek

Chief Information and Digital Officer, Halton Healthcare

Kaitlyn McCague

Chief Clinical Information Officer, Brightshores Health System Corp.

How architecture, layout, and operational design shape outcomes and experience—especially in pediatric settings—and how IO’s delivery models turn evidence-based concepts into large-scale reality, increasingly supported by digital and AI-enabled technologies.

• Flow & wayfinding: Layouts that reduce stress and wait—clear sightlines, intuitive routes, decentralized check-in, family zones, and real-time wayfinding supported by predictive analytics and AI-driven patient flow insights.
• Sensory & safety: Light, acoustics, privacy, infection-control adjacencies; designing rooms and common spaces that calm, protect, and include families, with data and AI-informed insights helping optimize environmental conditions and safety.
• Smart-enabled spaces: RTLS/occupancy analytics, digital signage, nurse call, and “building OS” layers—enhanced with AI-driven operational analytics—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, digital infrastructure, and future-ready AI capabilities from day one.

When a cyberattack cripples a hospital, accountability becomes as critical as recovery. As healthcare systems adopt more digital and AI-enabled technologies, responsibility for protecting these systems becomes increasingly complex. 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 defending both traditional IT systems and emerging AI-enabled healthcare technologies.
• Lessons learned from real breaches where accountability failed, including incidents involving third-party platforms and AI-supported tools.
• Building governance frameworks that clearly define risk ownership for cybersecurity, data protection, and AI systems.
• Creating a culture of shared accountability to strengthen cyber resilience as healthcare organizations adopt more advanced digital and AI capabilities.