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December 19, 2024
Want to view this list offline? Get the PDF here.
The Digital Patient, which tells the stories of leaders in Digital Health, is excited to showcase the accomplishments of nine Digital Health and Innovation leaders paving the way in healthcare innovation.
Coming from the worlds of innovation, transformation, informatics and more, these leaders are being recognized demonstrating significant accomplishments and innovation in leveraging Digital Health to improve the patient experience, clinical outcomes, and operational metrics at hospitals and health systems.
These visionary leaders stand out for their achievements in using technology to empower patients as partners in their care journey - providing patients with an app-based virtual companion to guide them pre and post-care, including evidence-based education, reminders, remote symptom monitoring, and more. Often this also involves delivering integrated experiences with EHRs, patient portals and digital front doors.
Please join us in celebrating these amazing leaders:
Dr. James Chan, Director of Innovation (Sault Area Hospital): Dr. Chan led SAH’s enterprise deployment of remote care monitoring across 14 care pathways, including in general surgery, cancer, women’s health, chronic care, and mental health. Not only was SAH the first hospital in Canada to deliver a MEDITECH-integrated remote care monitoring program, but they demonstrated amazing results: reducing ED visits by 72%, readmissions by 64% and LOS by 8%. Recognizing SAH’s leadership, Dr. Chan was invited to speak about this innovation at MEDITECH LIVE in 2022. He was recently invited to write about SAH’s initiative and lessons learned here.
Rob Howe, Director, Digital Health (Cambridge Memorial Hospital): Mr. Howe has been the driving force behind CMH’s deployment of digital care journeys to virtually guide patients across hip and knee surgery. Over 1,000 patients have benefited in total, with 88% activating and reading over 12,000 pages of evidence-based education in the past 12 months alone. Moreover CMH has achieved significant reductions in ED visits. As Mr. Howe shared in CMH’s original launch announcement, this digital approach “provides patients with comprehensive patient education to facilitate more effective self-management at home. This allows health care providers to redistribute their time and expertise more effectively.”
Duska Kennedy, Chief Digital Officer and Samantha Lee, Manager, Digital Health (North York General Hospital): Ms. Kennedy, Ms. Lee and the NYGH team rolled out surgical remote monitoring to hip, knee and colorectal surgery, supporting over 2,300 patients since inception. They also championed an integration of the platform with its Oracle Cerner EHR, which enabled automation of patient enrollment workflows, a fully integrated experience with NYGH’s digital front door (North York Navigator app). The hospital has seen particular success for colorectal surgery, including lower length of stay and ED visits. Read more about NYGH’s surgical remote monitoring initiative here.
Andriana Lukich, Director, Digital Solutions (St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton): Ms. Lukich led SJHH to be the first hospital in Canada to deliver a fully Epic and MyChart integrated digital care journey experience, supporting patients across Orthopedics, General Surgery, Bariatrics, Urology and Thyroid surgeries. Through a SMART on FHIR integration, the care teams can remotely monitor patients from right within the EHR. The initiative has been incredibly successful, leading to reduction of length of stay by 68% and ED visits by 17%. Moreover, Ms. Lukich championed a fully integrated experience with SJHH’s digital front door (St Joe’s Navigator app). Read more about Ms. Lukich’s lessons learned from leading this innovation.
Isabelle Lusseyran, Best Practices, Innovation and Telehealth Advisor (Montreal Heart Institute): Ms. Lusseyran is the driving force behind Canada’s largest cardiac hospital’s digital patient engagement program, virtually guiding patients pre and post care for cardiac surgeries, including TAVI, TMVR, Mitral and Tricuspid procedures. The TAVI program has been particularly successful, with MHI publishing data on the digital health initiative reducing ED visits by 50.1% and readmissions by 33.5% in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. To date, over 5,000 patients have benefited from this initiative. Read more about MHI’s success here.
Justin Saindon, Director, Digital Transformation & Analytics (Niagara Health): Mr. Saindon is a key driving force behind Niagara Health’s enterprise initiative to digitally guide patients pre and post-surgery across three hospital locations for orthopedics, urology, breast cancer surgery, general surgery, and vascular surgery. He also led Niagara Health’s integration of this program with its digital front door, the Niagara Navigator app - one of only three hospitals in Ontario to do so. The initiative has helped over 2,000 patients to date, with 85% of patients activating and 90% of patients recommending the program to others. Read Niagara Health’s story on their initiative here.
Mohammed Shaheen, Chief Information and Operating Officer (Cornwall Community Hospital): Mr. Shaheen led CCH to be the first hospital in Canada to deliver digital care journeys integrated with its Oracle Cerner EHR using SMART on FHIR technology - which allows CCH to streamline patient enrollment and monitoring on SeamlessMD from right within the Cerner patient chart. Digitally guiding patients across hip, knee, shoulder, breast, colorectal and emergency general surgeries, over 1,300 patients have been supported, with 91% feeling more confident before surgery and 86% feeling more confident at-home during recovery. Read this story from Oracle Cerner on CCH’s leadership in healthcare IT, including this integrated digital patient engagement initiative.
Jennifer Sheils, Vice President Strategy, Transformation and Chief Innovation Officer (Horizon Health Network): Ms. Sheils was the catalyst behind HHN’s deployment of a virtual companion for patients in New Brunswick, starting in cardiac surgery and now expanding to hip, knee and colon surgery patients. The motivating factors for this program are to improve the patient experience, as Ms. Sheils shared: “There's such stress and fear and concern when you're going through a significant health event. Anything we can do to help prepare a patient for what to expect and support them on their journey, even before they come in the doors of the hospital… it's an improvement." Already 97% of patients recommend the program to others and HHN has seen improvements in hospital length of stay and ED visits. CBC covered the launch of the program here.
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