National Forum on AI in Healthcare

Elissa Strome works with leaders at Canada’s three national AI Institutes in Edmonton (Amii), Montreal (Mila), and Toronto (Vector Institute) and across the country to advance Canada’s leadership in AI research, training and innovation. She is a champion of equity, diversity and inclusion in science, and an ambassador for Canada’s position in AI research, innovation, and policy internationally. Elissa is a member of the federal government’s AI Advisory Council, where she co-chairs the Public Awareness Working Group, and the OECD Network of Experts on AI.

Elissa completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia. Following a post-doc at Lund University, in Sweden, she decided to pursue a career in research strategy, policy, and leadership. From 2008 – 2017 she held senior leadership positions at University of Toronto’s Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, advancing major institutional strategic research priorities, including establishing and leading the SOSCIP research consortium. She recently earned her black belt in taekwondo.

Roxana Sultan leads Vector’s data strategy and its contributions to Ontario’s and Canada’s AI health sector. Along with our health team and partners, Roxana drives applications of AI to life sciences, fostering research, health sector and industrial sponsor projects, and initiatives to advance the health space, contributing to short-, medium-, and long-term impact achievements within the Ontario health ecosystem.

Roxana has over 20 years of leadership experience in the Ontario health system, including with the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in the University Health Network, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre (now “SickKids Centre for Community Mental Health”), Cancer Care Ontario, and the Hospital for Sick Children.

Roxana holds an Adjunct Professor appointment with the University of Toronto in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, where she teaches at the graduate level on the topics of intelligent medicine and machine learning.

Dr. Virginia Robinson started her career as a full service family doctor in Northern Quebec in the community of Chisasibi. She subsequently held positions as the Chief of Emergency and Medical Director of Grand River Hospital in Kitchener Ontario, and in the family medicine department at McMaster University. As a mountaineer she developed an interest in high altitude medicine and served as the physician on the Canadian Everest 2000 Expedition.

For the last 20 years Virginia has worked in Fernie, BC where she developed a passion for the use of ultrasound in rural and remote communities to improve access and quality of care for patients. Virginia has been teaching ultrasound to students, residents, and physicians for the last 10 years and is currently also a professor for the Rural Ultrasound Fellowship. She is the POCUS lead for the Rural Coordination Centre of BC and the medical lead for the UBC OB Hands On Ultrasound Course (HOUSE OB).

Karen leads a $300+ million portfolio of investments in digital innovation projects focused on developing digital technologies that keep Canadians healthy, protecting our environment and address climate change, and drive economic productivity. The Supercluster's cross-sector community is made up of 1000+ industry, academic and public sector partners collaborating and achieving technology breakthroughs that no one company could do alone. To date, Supercluster programs have resulted in 130+ Canadian-owned IP assets and with the potential of generating $1.3+ billion in additional revenue for businesses growing in Canada and on the global stage.

By applying her broad experience in leading complex programs at global, national and regional scales, she brings a strategic, yet pragmatic perspective to investing in world-class initiatives. Karen has led some of the most complex “firsts” and “never-done-before” initiatives in the information technology, healthcare, and financial services sectors.

Dr. Mitchell is currently a professor in the Department of Medicine and the Senior Program Director of Artificial Intelligence Adoption with AHS. He received his PhD at the University of Western Ontario and has been working in the fields of biomedical imaging, artificial intelligence, and machine learning for 30 years.

Dr. Mitchell was the inaugural Artificial Intelligence Officer at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Florida from 2019 to 2021. There, he led efforts to develop AI tools to improve the efficiency and quality of cancer care, including models to predict patient outcomes from electronic health record data, and natural language processing to infer diagnostic codes from free-text pathology reports. He was also a Professor of Radiology at Mayo Clinic in Arizona from 2011 to 2019 and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Radiology, and Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Calgary from 2000 to 2011.

Melanie de Wit currently teaches Health Law, Risk Management and Ethics within the MHSc and MSc Quality Improvement & Patient Safety programs, and was awarded the Eugenie Stuart Teaching Award in 2022. She chairs Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network – Legal table, and has held leadership roles in academic hospitals in Toronto since 2015, currently as Chief Legal Officer at Unity Health Toronto. Melanie graduated from law school at the University of Toronto and completed a Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins.

Shannon is a highly skilled health informatics leader, passionate about transforming healthcare through patient engagement and experience in strategic planning, portfolio/program management, and systems implementation.In this executive role, she supports our local and provincial systems and partners with the Ministry of Health to deliver digital strategies, including the latest work delivering the IMMS BC solution, vaccine passport and Health Gateway.

Shannon returned to PHSA in 2019 from TELUS, wheres he was principal for patient engagement leading strategy and development of TELUS Health’s patient facing applications, including Personal Health Record, Home Health Monitoring, and EMR Portals.

Previous to TELUS Health, Shannon was director, clinical solution delivery for PHSA.She led the delivery of major clinical IM/IT projects across PHSA, Vancouver Coastal Health and ProvidenceHealthcare.She also led the teams responsible for the Project Portfolio Management Office,Budget Planning and Management, and Performance Management and Benefits Evaluation.

Shannon is past president of the Board of Digital Health Canada. In November 2021, she was awarded a Top Forty under 40award fromBusiness in Vancouver

Michael Hillmer is Assistant Deputy Minister of the Capacity Planning and Analytics Division of the Ministry of Health/Ministry of Long-Term Care and has been part of the Ontario Public Service since 2007. In this role, along with the health data and analytics portfolio he also leads the Digital Health and Information Mgmt. Strategy & Policy branches. The Health Data portfolio oversees data collection, integration, and management services to maintain a trusted foundation of high-quality health data.
The Health Analytics portfolio generates trusted and actionable insights that improve the sustainability and quality of the healthcare system. The data and digital health portfolio is responsible for setting policy, strategy and investment management directions that help deliver the benefits of digital health to Ontarians and drive responsible use of health data for the public good. Michael is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, and his academic background includes graduate degrees from the University of Toronto, and a BSc from Carleton University.

Ryan is a passionate individual who is actively working in government to set higher expectations and deliver them on behalf of the people. His diverse background and experience in health leadership, innovation, operations and internal consulting within health provides him a diverse, robust experiences to lead digital health solutions. His successes include the delivery of products like VirtualCareNS, awarding winning primary care solution and the YourHealthNS application.