In Conversation With…. Anne Forsyth

Anne Forsyth is the Director of Clinical Applications and Decision Support at Women’s College Hospital, bringing over fifteen years of leadership experience in healthcare and health information management. She holds a Master of Health Science in Health Administration from the University of Toronto and has held roles at key organizations, including the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), eHealth Ontario, and Cancer Care Ontario.

Hélène is a strategic thinking Health Care Professional with over 30 years of experience in digital health, including clinical informatics, strategic leadership, strategic education/learning, change management, continuous quality improvement, and project management. Hélène has extensive knowledge of digital health applications, development, and clinical systems transformation. She is current with healthcare strategies and thinking resulting in requests for performing peer review of articles for Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL) journal, and abstracts for Digital Health Canada eHealth Conference, and CCHL conferences, in addition to her activities as Board Member of the CCHL journal. She was also a member of several HIMSS international task forces, moderated educational sessions at HIMSS conferences, educational webinars and eHealth Conferences.

Hélène’s involvement in the healthcare and informatics community has resulted in several publications and presentations at both national and international levels. Hélène has a strong ability to bridge knowledge from research, clinical, and business components allowing the sharing of lessons learned, benefit realization, strategies and vision for the integration of technologies in the clinical environment and management of healthcare.

Hélène has been on the Digital Health Canada/COACH Board of Directors for 4 terms and has contributed a significant amount of time to many activities to advance digital health. She is also CPHIMS-CA certified and has maintained her certification for over 15 years. She has been instrumental in developing learning guides, and mentoring others to achieve the CPHIMS-CA certification. She co-led the development of “COACH Health Informatics Primer for Clinicians.” She has been recognized for her contributions on the Digital Health Canada Board of Directors (2020), and COACH Board of Directors (2014); Women Leader 2019 for Digital Health in Canada and is a recipient of the Ontario Nursing Informatics Group Achievement Award (1994).

She currently provides Digital Health consulting services as a T.R.M. consultant (Transformation–clinical/business, ROI, and Marketing) focusing on innovation and health care transformations through digital health.

Hélène has worked for several years for eHealth Ontario and has provided leadership in the development of provincial electronic health record governance framework and effectively provided leadership on special projects. Other notables include organizational communication and accomplishments such as leading the development of communication and information tools to promote and successfully position new initiatives. She has developed and maintained strong partnerships/relationships with key stakeholders, peers and professional associations. She has led the development of the EHR/HI (Electronic Health Record/Health Informatics) education and education centre, strategic plans for driving value through education, training, and learning to tactically position organizations. She led the development of learning initiatives and education programs. One of Hélène’s key strategic influences is related to the development of various educational materials such as eLearn, workshops, reference documentation for newly created programs; Healthcare Bootcamp, CPHIMS-CA certification, Clinical site visit, Architecture and Standards, and provincial EHR Blueprints. Hélène accomplished all of this to improve employees’ performance and work with their ability to incorporate knowledge acquired in their work activities. Other notable responsibilities include the development of benefit realization metrics supporting implementation of technologies and organizational transformation.

Hélène is passionate, energetic and charismatic health care professional who is committed to the advancement of Digital Health in Canada. She has contributed her healthcare strategies, thinking and knowledge in various forums such as publications, presentations at various Health Care conferences and by being a faculty member at the University de Sherbrooke for the delivery of courses such as “Dossier de santé électronique partagé” (Shared Health Record) and Information Technology course at George Brown College in Toronto. Hélène is well known in the Digital Health community and has a strong ability to create communication and information tools to promote and successfully position new initiatives.

She has been involved in the Exam Committee for the CPHIMS and CA exams for several years. She worked on the COACH Exam Development Task Force to develop questions for the Canadian portion of the CPHIMS Exam, as well as the content for the CPHIMS-CA Review Sessions. She is a member of the CPHIMS-CA Exam Committee. She represented Digital Health Canada (COACH) on the HIMSS Exam committee. As co-Editor, she was instrumental in updating of the Digital Health Canada (COACH) Reference guide (2019). In addition, she is involved in education initiatives as a Faculty member of Digital Health Canada.

As a Board member of COACH/Digital health Canada, she was involved in the development of COACH/Digital Health Canada strategic plans, participated in several committees and conferences. She chaired/co-chaired several Digital Health committees to engage health professionals. She continues to be actively involved in the development of new educational initiatives resulting in new product offerings and new sources of revenues for Digital Health Canada. These new educational programs are now being repurposed to meet regional and local educational requirements. Over the years, she has participated at several COACH/Digital Health Canada, participated in Community of Practice, and CPHIMS-CA Webinars delivering educational content. She was a member of the COACH/HIMSS Ontario education committee planning the ONUP 2014 and ONUP 2015 conferences.

In previous years, she served as the Chair of the HIP@Work Task Force and helped identify requirements for the career tool using the career matrix developed by COACH. She also sat on the HIMSS Ontario Board of Directors for 10 years and was the chair of several HIMSS Ontario committees including the education committee. She co-authored the first Nursing Informatics Annual issue of COACH. She was appointed by COACH as their representative on the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Nursing Informatics SIG for 1997-2001 and was a member of the planning committee for the MedInfor95 conference held in Vancouver BC.

She is committed to the vision that digital health is the key to better, safer and high-quality care and the key enabler for transforming the delivery of healthcare services. Through her numerous involvements with COACH/Digital Health Canada activities on committees, her current role, she continues to actively contribute to making digital health transformation a reality. She continues to inspire, help colleague in networking, empowering them towards excellence in Digital Health field.

Rod Burns received a B.Sc. (Hons) in Medical Physiology from the University of Western Ontario in 1988 and a Masters of Health Administration from the University of Ottawa in 1992. He spent 15 years working in the hospital sector in Ontario and three years in the NSM LHIN environment.

He has held positions in Finance, Administration, Community Relations, Information Technology & Services, Clinical Utilization Management, Decision Support and Digital Health. Through a 30-year career, Rod has held senior leadership positions in Information Management portfolios developing and implementing multiple IS and corporate strategic plans.

He is currently providing digital health consulting at a provincial level in Ontario.
Rod is active in the professional community and a strong believer in on-going leadership development.

Along with memberships with various professional associations, he served as Board Secretary for ProResp Health in Sarnia, Board Chair of the Huronia Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic, Past President of the Ontario Chapter of the Health Information and Management Systems Society and Past President of the Southwestern Chapter of the Canadian College of Health Service Executives. He was one of the first Canadians to earn the CPHIMS-CA credential in 2005, his CDPSE and CHCIO and CDH-E credentials between 2015 and 2020.

Rod earned his FCCHL in 2018 and the FHIMSS credential in 2022 as a culmination of a career commitment to ongoing professional development.

Rod’s current professional interests lie in consumer health, health system leadership, digital health, and institutional knowledge management. He continues to support health service leadership development through his ongoing involvement as a CCHL CHE Program Evaluator and Fellowship Program Evaluator and Mentor. He is also a member of the CCHL Fellows Council.

Ted Scott founded Hamilton Health Science’s (HHS) innovation function and has established HHS as one of the leading Canadian hospitals in the development and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care. He was previously Chief Innovation Officer and Dean of Applied Research at Mohawk College, where he founded IDEAWORKS, a college-wide research and innovation program, and rolled out a college-wide blended learning initiative. Ted is an expert digital health strategist and has a wealth of experience in industry relations and commercialization, as well as innovation policy. He returned to HHS where he started his career as a sonographer after working at The Hospital for Sick Children and Huntsville District Memorial Hospital. Ted is a lifelong learner who earned his Master of Applied Science in Medical Ultrasound and his Ph.D. in Diagnostic Imaging from Charles Sturt University of Australia.