This winter, master the fundamentals of Canadian health informatics

This compact virtual real-time series of courses will take learners through the core concepts of health informatics, equipping them with the essential knowledge and skills required to succeed in the Canadian digital health landscape.

Each session of this core health informatics learning series will be presented virtually by established Canadian digital health professionals with real-world experience, diverse regional perspectives, and proven expertise in their area of study.

The series' seven modules align with Digital Health Canada's defined Health Informatics Professional Core Competencies:

• Information Management
• Technology Ecosystem
• Clinical and Health Services
• The Canadian Health System
• Healthcare Transformation
• Project Management
• Analysis and Evaluation

PLUS a bonus session outlining the path to becoming a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems – Canada (CPHIMS-CA).

• Start Date: February 11, 2025
• End Date: March 6, 2025

Earn 1 CEU for each hour of class time! 
Refer to the HIMSS renewal requirements guidelines for more information.

Join us for snacks and socializing at this casual evening MeetUp in Toronto (conveniently taking place just before the ON25 Conference)! Digital Health Canada MeetUps offer opportunities to network with digital health professionals from your area in a relaxed atmosphere.

Your $36.75 registration fee includes snacks and one drinks ticket (soda, wine, or beer).

Registration fees shown include 13% HST.

Registration Cancellation Policy: All sales are final, and there are no refunds. Substitutions are available until February 25, 2025. Prices are in Canadian dollars.

Connect with Ontario public and private sector leaders and innovators as they explore the issues that matter most to Ontario patients, caregivers, and digital health professionals—discussions that are the hallmark of the annual Digital Health Canada ON25 Conference (UpOnDigital: Update on Ontario Digital Health).

Connect with your Toronto peers: join us at the MeetUp event the night before the conference. Learn more and register here to save your spot.

• Registration fees shown include 13% HST. 
• CPHIMS-CA Maintenance: Earn 5 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for attending this event.
• Cancellation policy: Registration cancellations received before 5:00 PM ET on January 24, 2025, will be eligible for a full refund. Registration cancellations received after 5:00 PM ET on January 24, 2025, are non-refundable. An alternate attendee’s name may be substituted until February 25, 2025 by sending a written substitution request to info@digitalhealthcanada.com. Any registration transferred from a member to a non-member will be adjusted to the non-member rate.
• Sponsorship Opportunities: To inquire about sponsoring this event, contact Dino Falvo.

We present a novel Neural-Symbolic Explainable-AI (XAI) framework, integrating state-of-the art semantic knowledge graphs and machine learning (ML) methods, to make the output of ML models transparent so they can be safely used in clinical settings. Current XAI methods explain the output of ML models simply in terms of feature importance. Our XAI framework generates health knowledge-driven decision paths, comprising clinical concepts and evidence drawn from the literature, to provide a clinically-interpretable trace of how the ML model has processed the input data to generate its output/predictions. We applied our XAI framework for organ transplantation decision support, where we generate and visualize decision paths comprising organ transplant concepts to explain the ML-model’s predictions of kidney transplant survival and donor-recipient matches, thus making complex ML models useful for organ transplantation.

Presented by:

Prof. Syed Sibte Raza Abidi, NICHE Research Group, Dalhousie University is Professor of Computer Science and Medicine at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. He is the scientific lead of the NICHE (kNowledge Intensive Computing for Healthcare Enterprises) research group that conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of AI, health and digital health. He has over 25 years of research and innovation experience of AI-driven health data analytics and health knowledge management.  He has developed over 40 AI-driven digital health solutions targeting clinical decision support, clinical guideline execution, digital therapeutics and personalized patient empowerment. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed research papers at top venues, secured over $18 million in research grants and supervised over 100 graduate students. He is the recipient of the Canadian Health Informatics Leadership Award, International Award for Innovation in Medical Informatics, Research Excellence Award and multiple best paper awards. He is the Board Member of International Association of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and past board member of Digital Health Canada. Dr. Jaber Rad, NICHE Research Group, Dalhousie University

Jaber Rad is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, where he recently completed his Ph.D. in the field of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is a member of the NICHE research group. His research lies at the intersection of Semantic Web technologies and Machine Learning, with particular focus on generating explanations to interpret the predictions of complex ML models. He has published his research at international AI conferences. He also has expertise in visual analytics and is currently working on a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) project to develop an analytical dashboard that monitors antibiotic consumption for promoting effective antimicrobial stewardship. Dr. Rad is passionate about advancing AI's reliability and interpretability in healthcare settings.

Earn One Continuing Education Unit (CEU) for attending this webinar. Content from the webinar aligns with Core Health Informatics Topics: The Canadian Healthcare System, Information Technology, Analysis and Evaluation

Webinar Wednesday attendance is one of the benefits of Digital Health Canada Membership. Not a member yet? Join Digital Health Canada to enjoy Webinar Wednesdays and other benefits of membership. 

The Canadian FHIR Exchange Specifications (Ca:FeX), developed by Canada Health Infoway, supports seamless health information exchange across Canadian healthcare systems using the FHIR standard. It enables interoperability by providing guidelines tailored to the Canadian healthcare ecosystem, focusing on harmonizing data exchange so that systems across provinces, territories, and organizations can communicate effectively. This addresses the unique needs of operationalizing a specification after it has been adopted. Venuiti Healthcare has already implemented Ca:FeX for one of our clients, and we’d like to share our learnings from this project.

Presented by:

Alexey Sidelnikov, Venuiti Healthcare 

Alexey is an innovative, results-driven technology leader with 10+ years of proven CTO / CIO experience and 20+ years building state-of-the-art technology. A problem-solver with a passion for technology; he is skilled in grasping the big picture, conceptualizing, developing, and implementing the highest quality solutions.

He began his health-tech journey working with the National Institute of Health (NIH) under the United States Government, contributing to groundbreaking advancements in the Human Genome Project. Since then, he has gone on to spearheaded multiple large-scale projects at Venuiti, leading highly focused technical teams that drive innovation and success in health-tech.

Shannon Teeter, Venuiti Healthcare

Shannon is a visionary leader and a passionate advocate for leveraging technology to revolutionize the healthcare industry. With over 15 years of experience in the health-tech sector, she has been at the forefront of driving innovation and implementing cutting-edge solutions that improve patient outcomes and streamline healthcare operations.

Her journey in health-tech began with a deep-seated love for research and a desire to bridge the gap between technology and practical healthcare applications. This foundation has fueled her commitment to evidence-based approaches and continuous learning.

At Venuiti Healthcare, Shannon spearheads initiatives that harness the power of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics to create innovative health solutions. Under her leadership, the company has achieved significant milestones, including applications she has worked on deployed on the region, national and international stage. 

Earn One Continuing Education Unit (CEU) for attending this webinar. Content from the webinar aligns with Core Health Informatics Topics: The Canadian Healthcare System, Information Technology, Analysis and Evaluation

Webinar Wednesday attendance is one of the benefits of Digital Health Canada Membership. Not a member yet? Join Digital Health Canada to enjoy Webinar Wednesdays and other benefits of membership. 

An AI-driven referral system is being developed to optimize discharge planning for youth mental health crises. By integrating data extracted from electronic health records and matching patients with appropriate community services, it improves referral accuracy, expedites planning, reduces emergency wait times and readmissions, ensuring better patient outcomes and reduced costs.

Presented by:

Fatemeh Bagheri, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto

Fatemeh Bagheri earned her BSc in Biomedical Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology and an MSc in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto. Her academic interests include Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Medical Image Processing, and Biomedical Signal Processing. During her master’s studies, she focused on enhancing the quality of MR images by predicting high-field MR images from low-field ones using generative models. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where her research focuses on leveraging artificial intelligence to develop a referral system aimed at optimizing discharge planning for youth in mental health crises.

Earn One Continuing Education Unit (CEU) for attending this webinar. Content from the webinar aligns with Core Health Informatics Topics: The Canadian Healthcare System, Information Technology, Analysis and Evaluation

Webinar Wednesday attendance is one of the benefits of Digital Health Canada Membership. Not a member yet? Join Digital Health Canada to enjoy Webinar Wednesdays and other benefits of membership. 

As emergency departments across Canada face increasing strain, patient redirection has emerged as a game-changing solution—but success depends on multiple factors. With a decade of experience in this field and more than 300,000 successful patient redirections across Canada and Europe, LGI Healthcare Solutions has identified the 10 key strategies that make redirection programs effective.

Join us for this exclusive webinar to explore these 10 proven strategies and learn how to:

• Implement best practices in patient redirection to effectively reduce ER overcrowding.
• Identify and avoid common pitfalls when redirecting non-urgent cases to alternative care settings.
• Leverage a proven model that enhances patient satisfaction and ensures staff adoption.
• Foster collaboration between hospitals, clinics, and community care to create a robust redirection network.

Whether you support an integrated care network, an acute care facility, or a provincial health system, this session will equip you with the tools to drive meaningful change in emergency care.

Presented By:

Alexandre Couillard, Assistant Director, LGI Healthcare Solutions 

Alexandre worked as an administrative assistant in the emergency department at Sacré-Coeur Hospital in Montreal while studying software engineering. This experience sparked a passion for solving complex challenges in healthcare, leading to his early involvement in a redirection project. After graduating, Alexandre joined LGI in 2016 in a technical role before transitioning to product management. Over the past decade, he has been deeply involved in the redirection solution and now serves as the Assistant Director responsible for this initiative. 

Francis Cuerrier, Director of Clinical Solutions, LGI Healthcare Solutions 

Francis is the Director of Clinical Solutions at LGI since 2020. Prior to joining LGI, he spent nearly 20 years as an emergency nurse at the University of Montreal Hospital Center, where he worked primarily in the emergency department, including triage and as an assistant head nurse. 

Following his clinical career, he specialized in care pathway optimization and clinical digitalization. He later served as a senior consultant in application synergy optimization for hospitals. For the past five years, he has been implicated to the development and enhancement of the LGI-Redirection product, focusing on improving patient flow and optimizing emergency department operations through technology.

Join us in Toronto from June 1 – 3 for e-Health25!

e-Health is the premier event for Canadian digital health professionals working to make a difference in health and healthcare delivery.

Since its inception in 2000, the e-Health Conference and Tradeshow has served as a vital epicentre of Canadian digital health discussion and debate, attracting over 1,000 health professionals annually. e-Health is the optimal spot for networking and knowledge sharing with peers nationally and around the globe.

With in-demand speakers, expert panellists and presenters, and leading-edge exhibitors, e-Health always delivers memorable education and networking opportunities.

Join us as we celebrate 25 years of e-Health!

Visit the e-Health website to learn more.

All CHIEF Executive Forum members are invited to attend the CHIEF Executive Forum Spring25 Reception in Toronto on June 3, 2025. Reserve your spot by registering today or send an email confirming your attendance to chief@digitalhealthcanada.com.

Your CHIEF Membership includes registration at both the Spring and Fall Symposia and Receptions, however, to reserve your place and ensure everyone will be comfortably accommodated, separate confirmation is required for each of the events.

Join us for this knowledge-sharing, learning, and networking event with public and private sector digital health leaders from across Canada. Reserve your seat at the table where important digital health conversations happen.

All CHIEF Executive Forum members are invited to attend the CHIEF Executive Forum Spring25 Symposium, taking place in Toronto on June 4. The Symposium experience will kick off on June 3 with a CHIEF Executive Forum networking reception after the close of the e-Health25 Conference and Tradeshow.

All Digital Health Canada Members are encouraged to register and attend the Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, June 18 from 12 - 1 PM ET. 

The following matters will constitute the Agenda of the Digital Health Canada Annual General Meeting 2025 (Virtual):

1. Call to Order
2. Approval of the Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held June 19, 2024
3. President's Report
4. CEO Report
5. Treasurer's Report and Audited Financial Statements for Fiscal Period ending March 31, 2025
6. Appointment of the Auditor for 2025-2026
7. Board Development Committee Report on Nominations and Elections
8. Introduction of Incoming Board of Directors
9. Other Business
10. Adjournment