Technology and Innovation

Digital tools promise better care. Are they delivering on the Quintuple Aim?

If primary care is increasingly digital, are these tools helping us move toward better patient experience, health outcomes, lower costs, improved clinician well-being and greater equity?

Sharing the waterfront with e-scooters and e-bikes

If we listen to the people who use the roads, including walkers, bicyclists as well as riders of e-bikes and e-scooters, we can design roads so that getting around feels safer and more pleasant.

When digital tools reshape primary care: What happens to the 4Cs?

The question is not whether digital systems can do more. It’s whether we are designing and governing them to protect the core functions of primary care – or allowing them to add load in ways that quietly undermine care.

Transparency is not risk free. But neither is restricted access

Patients should not have to file formal requests to understand their own care. They should not have to wait months to read information that already exists. And they should not be excluded from conversations that shape their health and lives.

The paradox of progress: How medical advancements are expanding the time we spend unwell

Humanity is living longer, yet a growing portion of that extended life is spent in poor health. What if the same forces that prolong life, namely technology and industrialization, are also increasing the percentage of our lives spent unwell?

The paperwork burden weighing on Canadian physicians

What’s the prescription for physician burnout? Intervention is required to simplify non-clinical workflows and alleviate the administrative burden on physicians.

The AI we get may not be the AI we need: Why physician-led governance is essential

AI holds enormous promise. Yet without clear, focused, physician-led and patient-centred governance, the AI we get may not be the AI we need.

Violent extremism is a public health problem

Social polarization and worsening toxic online ecosystems have catapulted a growing range of extremisms, which have pushed well beyond political ideology and into nihilism, misogyny, hate-fuelled and sexually exploitative forms.

These parliamentary studies are low-profile but have implications for access to medicines

Two studies by Parliamentary Standing Committees each have potentially serious implications for medical innovation, pandemic preparedness and access to medicines.

The quiet commercialization of primary care records

An emerging model is quietly turning Canadian patient medical records, and patients themselves, into lucrative commercial assets – often without patients' explicit knowledge or consent.

Our research ethics boards aren’t the problem – the system wasn’t built to protect participants

The bodies responsible for the ethical review of research and ensuring that it safeguards the individuals in it – operate with no national standards, no oversight and no accreditation at all.

Beyond the default patient: Diversity in virtual simulation-based health-care education

Virtual simulation platforms often fail to meaningfully reflect patient diversity, which may be shaped by underlying biases and have implications for clinical outcomes.

Technology is deepening economic abuse: Canada’s health system can’t afford to ignore it

Addressing economic and digital safety is no longer optional for health policy. It is a core component of patient wellbeing.

Fractured foundations: Reimagining primary care in Canada

Canada’s primary care system is not bending. It is breaking. And what breaks at the foundation eventually collapses across the whole structure.

Professional self-regulation can still work if we run it in the public interest

Self-regulation can work if we stop running quality assurance like licensing compliance and start running it like professional development in the public interest.

You asked an AI bot about your symptoms. Now what?

More and more people are turning to Artificial Intelligence to ask about health. The challenge is how to use it without getting hurt.

The software we deserve: Vibe coding the future of health technology

Vibe coding represents a potentially transformative approach to health informatics. By lowering barriers to entry we could address longstanding gaps in EMR systems.

Pharmacists are essential in bridging the gap between AI and patient-centered care

In a world pushing toward data-driven systems and algorithms, pharmacists can safeguard the human element of care by acting as a nexus between health and technology.

Meeting patients where they are: Why medical training must include social media literacy

Some medical schools are beginning to explore digital health communication, but comprehensive social media literacy training remains the exception rather than standard practice.

Fail-first drug rules defy logic, deny timely access for people with rare diseases

Despite the recent approval of targeted biologics that can significantly improve quality of life, Canadians living with Myasthenia Gravis continue to face unjust policy barriers.