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.

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.

Health data interoperability and connected care are now explicit priorities across Canada’s health systems. As the financial and capacity burden of chronic diseases such as diabetes continues to grow, health systems must better leverage interoperability between patient‑generated data from wearables and electronic health records (EHRs) to improve clinician access to meaningful data and support informed clinical decision‑making.

This session explores how continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) data can be securely integrated into the patient’s chart in the clinician's EHR system, enabling longitudinal visibility, more efficient workflows, and improved care coordination. Attendees will gain insight into the latest developments in diabetes interoperability and learn how connected CGM data can help health systems drive efficiency and improve diabetes management at scale.

As healthcare rapidly evolves, IT is no longer just a support function, it is a strategic enabler driving innovation, resilience, and patient-centered care. Everyone wants to transform and innovate, but we’ve all seen how slow those cycles can be. The pandemic has been a good catalyst to allocate budgets towards Healthcare, but until today, we do see those challenges in the IT landscape – whether it’s those old beds that are still being retrofitted to become smart beds, to the staff’s frustration with new application and workflows, all the way to CFO’s worries about where the proper spending of those budgets should be allocated.

This session will address those challenges and concerns, will try to set a blueprint for what an IT Infrastructure’s Network should focus on, and provide the solutions from HPE to help drive effective outcomes that Healthcare stakeholders are looking for.

Ontario’s front-door push hinges on high-functioning, digitally enabled primary care teams. As access expands, the challenge is ensuring that gains at the clinic level do not come at the expense of continuity, clinician workload, or system fragmentation.This session explores practical clinic-level playbooks—workflow, staffing, and digital tools, including AI-enabled solutions—that support same/next-day access, while also examining how these models connect with broader clinical systems and patient journeys across care settings.

• Clinic operating models that expand access—without unintended consequences
• The enabling stack: from digital tools to trusted clinical workflows
• Staffing & scope: maximizing team-based care with digital support
• Measuring what matters: access, experience, and system impact

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

Karim Jessa

Chief Medical Information Officer, The Hospital for Sick Children

Dan Harren

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

Sime Pavlovic Moderator

Partner, Consulting, PwC Canada

A system-level perspective on how cybersecurity must evolve in step with Ontario’s accelerating digital transformation. As AI, integrated platforms, and interconnectivity expand across healthcare, cybersecurity is becoming central to ensuring clinical continuity, operational resilience, and public trust. It will also examine how cybersecurity decisions shape equitable access, patient trust, and the experience of vulnerable populations in an increasingly digital system.

• Advancing provincial cyber resilience strategies in line with rapid digital and AI adoption
• Securing high-value systems (e.g., central waitlists, EHRs, AI-enabled tools) while safeguarding clinical continuity and trust
• Strengthening cross-sector collaboration across hospitals, public health, and government to manage evolving risks
• Embedding cybersecurity into digital leadership—balancing speed, risk, compliance, and equity to prevent unintended exclusion and ensure fair access

Emerson Rajaram

Chief Information Security Officer, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health

Scott Lowell

Chief Technology & Information Security Officer, St. Joseph's Health System

Rochelle Reid

Chief Health Equity Officer, Hamilton Health Sciences

Representative Moderator

TBC, Palo Alto

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.

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.

Documentation is one of the heaviest burdens in medicine today, and it doesn't discriminate by specialty. In this candid fireside chat, Dr. Sanjay Mehta, General Pediatrician at Kindercare Leaside, shares what it actually looks and feels like to use AI in everyday clinical practice. An honest conversation about what changed, what surprised him, and what it means for a physician to finally spend less time on paperwork and more time with the patient in front of them. Walk away with a clear, grounded picture of AI-assisted care, and what's possible when technology gets out of the way and lets doctors be doctors

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

As Ontario accelerates digital and AI adoption, the challenge is no longer implementation—it is ensuring that data translates into measurable value and meaningful patient outcomes. This session will bring together system, organizational, and operational perspectives to explore how leaders are moving from maturity frameworks and governance to real-time insights that directly shape patient experience.

• Defining system-wide metrics that link digital and AI investments to outcomes, access, efficiency, and patient experience
• Moving from data maturity to action through aligned investment and capability building
• Using real-time analytics and predictive insights to improve patient flow and personalize care journeys
• Embedding insights into frontline workflows to drive immediate, tangible improvements

Gina Johar

Senior Vice President, Data and Knowledge Management, Infrastructure Ontario

Andriana Lukich

VP of Data Analytics, Strategic Transformation and Quality, St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton

Ryan Strum

Director, Business Performance Office, St. Joseph's Health System

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.

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.

Guillermo Rodas

Senior Security Specialist, Ontario Health

Parteek Dhream

Specialist, Cyber Defense Operations, Ontario Health

Dhanush Liyanage Moderator

Interim Director, Cyber Security Defense, Ontario Health

Ontario is standing up a single, regional “Access OS” that routes patients to the right hospital-based care through one queue with many front doors. This session examines the build, governance, and operational realities of delivering coordinated access across hospitals—and how this system must interface with the broader care ecosystem, particularly long-term care, where downstream capacity and transitions remain critical to system performance.

• Tech & Data Foundation: Central intake, eReferral, scheduling orchestration, FHIR-enabled interoperability across hospital EHRs, and AI-assisted triage and demand forecasting.
• Risk, Trust & Integrity: PHIPA by design, queue integrity (anti-gaming), bias governance in AI-supported prioritization, cybersecurity resilience, and auditability.
• Hospital Operational Readiness: Standardized referral pathways, SLOs/SLAs for access, AI-informed capacity planning, and command-centre enabled flow management.
• Interface with Long-Term Care: Aligning hospital access and discharge planning with LTC capacity and placement realities—improving visibility, coordination, and system flow despite non-integrated waitlists.
• Impact on Patients & Providers: A more coordinated entry into care, reduced administrative burden for clinicians, and clearer transitions for patients and families across the care journey.

Mide Seyi-Ajayi

Executive Director, Apotex Jewish Home for the Aged, Baycrest

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

Sime Pavlovic Moderator

Partner, Consulting, PwC Canada

When a cyberattack disrupts a hospital, the impact is immediate and operational—not just digital. Care delivery must continue even as systems go down, requiring clinicians, IT, and facilities teams to coordinate in real time. This panel explores how accountability extends beyond technology leadership to include the operational and facilities functions that sustain care when digital infrastructure fails.

• Defining Accountability Beyond IT: Clarifying the roles of CIOs, CISOs, clinicians, vendors, and facilities leaders in ensuring continuity of care during cyber incidents—not just system protection.
• From System Outage to Care Disruption: What happens when core systems go down—loss of communications, limited access to patient records, and the need to rapidly shift to manual, coordinated workflows.
• Facilities as the Backbone of Continuity: Preparing for real-world scenarios such as relocating patients across units or sites, managing physical flow in high-pressure situations, and supporting clinical teams when digital coordination is unavailable.
• Operating Without Digital Communication: How teams adapt when phones, email, and internal systems are down—relying on physical movement, escalation protocols, and on-the-ground coordination to maintain safe operations.
• Building System-Wide Readiness: Embedding cyber incident response into hospital operations—through drills, cross-functional alignment, and shared ownership between IT, clinical, and facilities teams.

Michael Cole

Chief Information Security Officer, Lakeridge Hospital

Nimira Dhalwani

Chief Technology Officer, The Hospital for Sick Children

Robert Hofmann

Vice President, Redevelopment & Capital Projects, Brant Community Healthcare System

Representative Moderator

TBC, Palo Alto