Helen Monkman, Assistant Professor, University of Victoria
Category: Emerging Professional

I hold Dr. Monkman in high esteem as an educator and researcher. It is upon scholars like Dr. Monkman that the future of digital health in North America depends. She excels as a mentor to undergraduates, graduate students, and junior colleagues from the University of Victoria in the School of Health Information Science. She is a thought leader using her unique digital health perspective—through the lens of human factors and cognitive psychology—to guide our professional community’s research agenda. Finally, she embodies the spirit of imagination and innovation needed to spearhead transformational change.

Dr. Helen Monkman earned her BSc and MA in Psychology from Carleton University and her PhD from the School of Health Information Science (HINF) at the University of Victoria. Helen is currently an Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Advisor in HINF. Her mission is to improve consumer health information systems by making them easier for people to use and the information easier to understand. She seeks to empower people and help them have better conversations with their health care providers and ultimately make informed health decisions.

Her research interests include human factors, user experience, usability, information visualization, and eHealth or digital health literacy, and how these factors impact the use and understandability of health information systems. Helen has also contributed to a wide range of projects, studies a variety of topics, and worked with many Canadian health organizations and post-secondary institutions. In addition to consumer health informatics, she has studied mobile health applications (apps), public health information systems, personal health records, electronic medication reconciliation, medical education, and human factors. Helen has presented at many provincial, national, and international forums. To date, she has published over 60 articles, 8 of which earned awards.