Dr. Charlene Chu, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
Category: Emerging Leader
“Dr. Charlene Chu embodies the leadership, innovation, and dedication that Digital Health Canada’s Women Leaders in Digital Health Award seeks to recognize. She is a collaborative, compassionate, and driven professional whose exceptional work bridges nursing, gerontology, and digital health. Her commitment to ethical, inclusive solutions in digital health not only advances the field but also shapes its future, ensuring that technology serves to enhance the lives of older adults. Her contributions have already made a significant impact, and I am confident that she will continue to drive meaningful change in the digital health landscape.”
Dr. Charlene Chu (RN, PhD) is Assistant Professor at the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing (University of Toronto, UofT); an Affiliate Scientist at The KITE Research Institute (University Health Network); and cross-appointed to the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute (UofT). She is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in advancing digital health innovations to promote equitable healthcare. Funded by more than $4 million to date, Dr. Chu is improving health outcomes through the integration of cutting-edge technologies – including artificial intelligence and sensor-based systems – to monitor and support both physical and cognitive health. In the past year she received two national awards for her training, leadership and research in digital health technology. Her graduate students have published first-authored papers this past year on digital health innovations in the journals Algorithms, Computer Informatics Nursing, and Applied Clinical Informatics. She belongs to national and international digital health bodies aiming to develop common data elements for long-term care research, and to transform nursing with AI. This past year she contributed to developing national nursing education requirements around informatics, as well as a provincial Digital Health Nursing Best Practice Guideline published by the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario.