Get Involved

Health workforce at the centre of AI’s transformation of our health systems: e-Health conference

June 5, 2024

Modernizing our health data systems so information can flow smoothly is where Canada’s health systems are heading, participants at this year’s e-Health conference were told, and we also heard about the many exciting advances in AI and how the health workforce must play a central role.

New advances in natural language processing, smart bots, movement scanners, and a variety of other innovations will all be part of our future, with several health regions developing a ‘digital twin’ that can centralize and analyze all aspects of health data to help policy makers evaluate options for planning across the continuum of patient care. 

We heard about privacy compliant digital tracking pods that can track the movements of patients and health care providers in hospitals to identify things like patient falls and adequate staff hand washing. There was even a humanized bot-interface that could speak directly with patients and answer questions just like a real person, and a friendly smile to boot!

Much of the work is still in its infancy, with companies collaborating to develop AI tools that solve for meaningful problems in the system. That collaboration will be key. Many people spoke about the need to break down processes into their components, to explore where AI can be inserted to achieve efficiencies in workflows. Others spoke about the need for effective governance structures for AI projects, so that data sharing, privacy and patient consent continue to be a priority. Perhaps most importantly, there was pervasive messaging that AI should support health care providers in doing their work, but leave decision making up to humans.

I left the conference with a sense that we are on the cusp of some big and important changes in health care, and that health care providers need to be central to the AI evolution. The health workforce will not only be part of health system transformation, it will be a key enabler of it. It was clear to me that, in the end, humans will need to adopt these new AI technologies into their workflows, and it will be humans that will be the catalyst for change.

Deb Cohen is Chief Operating Officer of Health Workforce Canada

Media Inquiries

Phone: 343-882-5059

Media requesting information can contact:

media@healthworkforce.ca

For all other inquiries, please contact:

info@healthworkforce.ca

Stay Connected

To stay up to date and learn how you can get involved, please sign up for our newsletter.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.
Your email address
Your name

Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that we live and work on the traditional territories of many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples. We recognize and celebrate the strength and resilience of Indigenous health workers and we embrace the opportunity to work closely together to advance cultural safety for those who provide care and those we care for.

Health Workforce Canada is a new, independent organization established by an Interim Steering Committee, supported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and funded by Health Canada. It has been created in recognition of the need to bring together health workforce experts and those in the health care field to learn from each other and strengthen health workforce data and planning to help ensure health workers are there to provide the care people in Canada need.

We are committed to engaging with a broad spectrum of stakeholders as we chart the path toward new approaches to health workforce planning.

© Health Workforce Canada 2024