DHiC 02 – How Leaders Create Innovation Cultures

Jennifer Urosevic: Oftentimes, it’s just that openness of people knowing it might not be perfect the first time, but to keep refining that solution.

Katie Bryski: Hello and welcome to Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada podcast. I’m Katie Bryski.

Shelagh Maloney: And I’m Shelagh Maloney.

Katie Bryski: I am a podcaster turned digital health professional.

Shelagh Maloney: And I’m a digital health professional turned podcaster.

We explore the who and the why behind healthcare technology in Canada.

Each month we invite leaders and change makers to share their journeys, their insights, and have a conversation with us about the work that they’re doing in digital health.

Katie Bryski: And this month we’re wondering, what comes to mind when we say innovation? Is it futuristic tech? Breakthrough research? A particular mindset?

As we’ll hear in today’s episode, innovation takes many forms.

We’re very pleased to be looking at two organizations approach to innovation, and we’re joined by two leaders at the forefront of health transformation, Welcome to Digital Health in Canada. Dr. Gillian Strudwick, Senior Scientist and Chief Clinical Informatics Officer at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

And Jennifer Urosevic, President and CEO at Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada. Thank you both so much for being here. Thanks for having us.

Gillian Strudwick: I’m so pleased to be here.

Shelagh Maloney: Thank you. Yes. Thanks, Jen and Gillian. We’re really pleased to have you here.

And maybe we’ll just start, Gillian, why don’t we start with you and just maybe tell us about yourself and about the work that you’re doing.

Gillian Strudwick: Sure. So first of all, thank you for this great opportunity to be here and participate in this wonderful conversation on innovation, something that is a driving force behind the work that I do and the work that we’re currently doing at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health. So you’ve introduced me.

My name is Gillian Strudwick. I’m a nurse, first and foremost, and I’ve gone back to school to do a PhD. So I’ve got a keen interest in research and how that intersects with the care that we deliver every day. I think of research as future thinking. So, as we think about all the work we’re doing currently today, and we bring in that research element, it’s about where we can go next, which is really exciting.

I work as a scientist, and I work as the Chief Clinical Informatics Officer at the hospital, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest mental health and addictions teaching hospital. And I also have a great opportunity to teach at the University of Toronto in programs that really hold innovation at the heart.

So, health informatics and the system leadership and innovation program. And so, I, I get to work with great students from really across the country, uh, who come to Toronto to learn and grow in this space. And they’re interested in often how this digital component can be a part of innovation.

Shelagh Maloney: Thanks, Gillian.

And Jen, over to you.

Jennifer Urosevic: Sure. Sounds good. I’m the President and CEO of Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada. I am a wife and a mom of three teenagers, so technology is always surrounding me. From a professional side of things, Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada started in 2018, launched from a charitable model of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

And as a national health care organization, really with the mission to support people who are blind or partially sighted to live the life that they choose, innovation and technology is all around us and really embraces sort of the change, particularly during the pandemic when the understanding of what six feet distance was and restrictions.

Technology was the lifeline for our clients and for our staff to continue to deliver services. So I’m really excited about this podcast and excited to share more throughout it.

Katie Bryski: I love this idea of technology and innovation, both being all around us and also innovation research being forward looking.

A little selfishly though, I’d actually like to take a moment to look back. Both of you actually started in fields different than the one that you ended up in when you were in school, which I can relate to.

So I actually worked in museums before pivoting to digital health. I’d love to know what drew you to your current fields.

Jennifer Urosevic: So as you know, probably from my background, I was in teacher’s college and I was on a placement and I felt four walls caving in on me and realized that I didn’t want, you know, my career of But I also knew that I wanted to In a way, I always had a deep passion for working with people with disabilities.

I had a brother who was deaf and remember professionals coming in and teaching him and the family, looking at us as a family unit. Really helping us learn how to work with him at a very young age. And so I had a very special mentor and person in my life who was a vision itinerant teacher. And when I was lost and not sure what to do, she told me I needed to become an Orientation and Mobility Specialist, which essentially teaches people who are blind or partially sighted How to travel and navigate through the world.

So one on one, using a white cane, using technology, using a guide dog. And so, I quickly pivoted into that, furthered my education, and landed a job 26 years ago. And through that journey, I moved through various roles, from clinical roles to national roles, management roles. And over the last two years, I’ve been the president and CEO.

Gillian Strudwick: I love hearing that story because it’s always interesting where people have started from and where they got their motivation to continue on their journey. And it’s often something that’s not so obvious. For myself, I started off in phys ed and kinesiology in my undergrad and quickly turned to nursing given the practical nature of the role.

I wanted to be there working with people alongside them. I wanted to have a job right away. I wanted to get right in there and do some work.

And as a nurse, you get to do that right from, depending on which school you go to, your first day of nursing school. And what I will say is that in one of my first clinical placements, I showed up at the hospital and arrived at the clinical unit.

I think it was a medical surgical unit. And there were no computers anywhere, despite the fact that all our assignments were due on computers and we had cell phones. There’s limited technology available beyond the IV pumps that were present. There was a lot of medical records that were on paper. And I don’t know if you, um, remember something called a Kardex.

This is often what nurses used to go to and, and physicians and other health professionals. Where it’d be sort of the quick take on what care needed to be delivered in a specific shift. And, uh, it was all in, in pencil, and eraser marks, and you’d have to be deciphering people’s handwriting. And often there’d be a couple of us looking over it, saying, you know, what does this say?

And so I remember thinking, there’s got to be opportunity for digital here. There’s all this information we’ve amassed in these paper records. What if they were electronic and we could use that data and we could solve some of the big health challenges? So that was one. And the second was the safety issues associated with paper and pencil and, you know, not having reminders for something as important as delivering important care that is necessary for someone’s life.

And so that was really the motivator to continue with the digital journey. Huge opportunity. I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but the problems that we were seeing in the health space, there had to be a role for technology and digital. And that was really the, the motivating factor to really continue in this space.

Katie Bryski: So it really sounds like you both had this moment of thinking, wait. I could do something different. So it’s almost like kind of innovation within your own career, which is a really interesting theme to show up in both of your journeys.

Shelagh Maloney: Yeah, you know, and it’s interesting because I was involved with Digital Health Canada early on and, you know, it gets to the point that you both made a little bit is that health informatics there, there were at that time, I think only one, the University of Victoria offered an undergraduate degree in health informatics and, and there was no other program in the country.

And so, the membership of Digital Health Canada, it was quite diverse. Clinicians and nurses and doctors and consultants and government people and IT people. And so it was all of these people that, to your point, Gillian, that saw this could be done better. We need to think about this a little bit differently.

And so there’s a really common theme, and I think digital health while technology and digital is all around us, and you said it nicely, Jen, in terms of just, you know, having your teenage children and the technology is so pervasive, but that innovation is still required, and we really continue to embrace that, and I think Vision Loss Rehab Canada, especially for those vulnerable populations and people suffering with mental health issues, we need to be even more proactive.

And, and maybe I should just state now that I am a member of the board of Vision Loss Rehab Canada. A volunteer member, I don’t get paid. So this is how I know about the great work that’s going on there.

But you know, Vision Loss Rehab Canada just won a really big technology innovation award. So Jen, maybe you can tell us a little bit about that.

Jennifer Urosevic: Absolutely. This is a real gift. I would say now to our organization to be recognized globally. So, uh, the Techquity Award is awarded by the HLTH Foundation. There was 200 submissions, and we were the successful international recipient of this award. And it’s for our Eye Health Screening Initiative, which started back in 2021, really in response to emerging needs of rural, remote, underserved communities, Indigenous communities as well, and high risks of diabetic retinopathy.

And we wanted to offer a solution. We’re not eye care providers, so we’re not optometrists or ophthalmologists. But there was long waits after the pandemic and through the pandemic for these life changing diagnoses. And so we looked, externally looked at what we could do to help get care closer to home.

We were already delivering our rehabilitation services in people’s homes in these communities. But we were seeing a high number of people who were really struggling. And so we looked at technology and with the use of a portable fundus camera. And an AI software, EyeArt, we were able to put technology into these communities in already existing places where people were coming for foot care or for other diabetes screening programs with paramedics in some of the rural areas to see our frail older adults.

And at the same time that they were getting their overall care, they were also getting their eyes screened. And in that first year, we had an 11 percent positivity rate of the screens that we were doing, which means that people hadn’t gone to an eye doctor in the past five years. And this was an indication that there was a form of diabetic retinopathy, which impacts long term effects of somebody’s overall health.

Um, the degree of vision loss is from mild to moderate to severe. Uh, and some people didn’t even realize that they had diabetes. The AI screen was picking up even those who had not had a formal diagnosis of diabetes. And we were then coordinating the care, so we didn’t have to deploy a whole new group of staff.

We worked with partnerships, so it was truly integrated into every community. We had one community partner, uh, which is our Ontario Provincial partner, the Diabetes Health Circle of Ontario. They called this program a gift to their community because a lot of people didn’t have access to eye care screening.

They were able to do it themselves in a very culturally safe and psychologically safe area to learn about a potential vision loss. And then we were there to help coordinate the care to optometry and ophthalmology and to any of the other services that they needed.

Katie Bryski: I’m really struck by this mix of technology and community, and I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about what, what catalyzed this project.

Jennifer Urosevic: So it really was talking to our community partners. Sometimes in the frontline work that we do, as we’re in communities, we identify a need and that need then becomes solution focused. One of the things that our team did really, really well during the pandemic is pivot, you know, and if you think about.

How you would deliver virtual care to people who are blind or partially sighted. Most people would say it can’t be done. And our team instrumentally changed the way that we deliver services in two weeks. Because our clients were so desperate to have that connection. And that need to understand what was happening around the world.

And so our community partners saw what we were doing and came to us. This program is funded now in a spread and scale across all of Ontario and we have some really good conversations happening in other provinces that our goal is to have this program available throughout Canada, in every province and every territory.

Katie Bryski: It’s really cool. I think it’s a great example too, and we often talk about meeting people where they’re at, and I think particularly with innovation, as you’re looking forward and trying to imagine something that’s never been done, it can sometimes feel a bit abstract, but I think you’ve done a great job of really.

Bringing it into the community, making it something that the community actually is co designing with you, it sounds like. And I know that that community approach, that integrated approach, is something that’s very evident at CAMH as well.

And similarly, I know Gillian, CAMH has a new Discovery Centre.

And bearing in mind your comment earlier about research being forward looking, What does this mean for researchers, for academics, for the community?

Gillian Strudwick: So I would love to talk about this. I love how this conversation has been around the community aspect of bringing people together, thinking about what the future holds, and then making it happen.

Because at a first glance, you could say, well, this Discovery Center is a building. But the building is, you know, the first point where we can bring clinicians, researchers, patients, family members, the community, you know, and I could go on together to be able to say, this is where we actually want to go for mental health.

We want to think upstream, as an example. We want to be proactive. We want to provide greater access. We want to support individuals from marginalized communities, ensuring they have access. And work with marginalized communities. So we want to do some big things, but we need a space first and foremost. And there was a ground breaking event that happened not long ago.

First of all, I have to say that if you’ve seen pictures of the new building. It is beautiful. It’s designed by an architect called KPMB, and they’ve already won some awards on their design. Part of that is they’ve been able to do this, this amazing thing where they’ve combined both honoring the past with a modern, futuristic building that will bring individuals together to be able to think about where we want to go and get us there.

I, you know, I don’t want to take up the whole conversation on this particular topic, but just to say that I think this is a testament to where we’re at in the mental health space. There’s a huge opportunity for discovery, for innovation, for research, and not that long ago, there was a stigma, and I, I, you know, we’re still working at reducing that stigma for mental health, but there was even a stigma to doing research, to donating, to, you know, all of these different components.

And I think, you know, collectively, as a community, and when I say community, it’s, you know, it’s not just Toronto or, or Ontario. The population of Canada, we’re getting there with understanding more about mental health and understanding the seriousness of it. And people are getting behind it. Researchers, clinicians, donors, and saying we want to think about where we can be in this space in the future.

So I think, um, there’s lots of excitement. We’ll be, you know, doing lots of hiring and recruitment and it’s just an exciting place to be when it comes to thinking about the future of mental health.

Shelagh Maloney: Just listening to both of you, and there’s some themes that are coming through, and you’re talking about the team, and you’re talking about Gillian, your students, and you’re talking about your partners, and you’re talking about the community, and I’m thinking more and more innovation, it’s really finding out what the needs are, and delivering them, and being open, and working with those providers, and sort of mentoring, and creating that culture of innovation, as it were.

I’m wondering if both of you can answer this question maybe in two different ways, like how do you mentor your teams and your staff and your partners to be innovative? And do you have mentors that you’ve had that have helped you in your journey in terms of teaching you how to be inclusive and innovative and thinking in a different way and creating that culture of innovation?

Jennifer Urosevic: Absolutely, there’s been mentors. Early on in my career, I was empowered by two executives that really pushed me to do scary things, is what I used to always call it. Um, put me in positions, you know, as a new person, curious about the bigger picture and not being afraid to use my voice. So when you come into a role that you maybe don’t have all of the expertise, but you have this deep passion and this deep vision of what it should be.

I had an incredible mentor early on in my career that, you know, had me design something nationally as a fairly new employee of the organization. And so I think that experience for me has translated in how I mentor my team. I use phrases like, we want to try scary things. We want to fail forward. We want to try things that we hear.

And to be really open and create safe spaces for people to share ideas. And not just the executive team, our frontline teams. Sometimes the clinical idea of the next innovation comes from, you know, somebody who is working one on one with a client who is really struggling with a certain area, and they’ve researched a new piece of technology, or a new system on how things could be delivered better or more efficiently, and those ideas need to be safe for us to continue to share them forward.

So, you know, I think one of the things that’s really important is I meet with every single new employee that comes into our organization within the first 3 months. And my message to them is, I want your ideas. We’re about to launch a new strategic plan and so over the last year we’ve had a lot of engagement with our staff who have fundamentally co designed the next four years and our roadmap for the future.

And technology is going to play a big role and innovation is going to play a big role in us being able to do more for our clients.

Shelagh Maloney: I love that response. And Gillian, um, sort of similar, but different.

Gillian Strudwick: Yeah, I was reflecting on how Jennifer was answering that question and thinking, I can tell just from the way you’re speaking that you do create that are, you know, safe for staff to be able to come up with ideas and share them, which is exactly what, uh, I certainly try to encourage amongst the teams that reported to me and also at the university where students can share really neat ideas, you know, outside of the box ideas that, you know, I feel like, you know, come work with me every day because I need that kind of thinking every day.

Um, one of the assignments that I provide when I’m teaching at the university is for students to go and either shadow a clinician or do an interview with a clinician and learn about their everyday work. But one of the pieces that I asked them to really learn more about are what are the challenges?

What are the issues? What are the hiccups that they experience every day? And those often are the opportunities for the out of the box thinking for the innovation. And there’s everything that comes back. You know, we think about, and we might laugh at this, but we think about the challenges with pagers. We still use a lot of pagers in, uh, organizations across the country.

There’s issues with medication safety. There’s issues with patient flow. So there’s lots of interesting problems that exist out there. And then the students take what they’ve learned from formal academic exercises, but also they’re out of the box thinking, they’re creative, blue sky thinking, and they come at these problems and then I always encourage them to share them with the organizations that they’re in.

Um, either shadowed in or done interviews in, I think bringing in fresh ideas is such a great idea, um, for being able to think through some of these complex problems. If I think back to that, really the question of, of mentorship and bringing a culture of innovation, it’s also being a mentor yourself to others to say, how do we, okay, I’ve identified an issue.

I think I have this really neat way of solving it. How do I navigate through. Making it happen. How do I garner the support to making it happen at the organization and not saying no Supporting people to getting to the place where they can either apply that Thinking or or figure out what whether it might work or not,

Katie Bryski: You know, Gillian, I just love hearing you talk about this because you can tell by the way you’re talking about it Jjst how important it is to you and how much thought you’ve put into it.

And I know, for myself, I try to take the approach that opportunity is just the other side of challenge, right? And so, I really like this idea of identifying pain points, and starting there, and building out from there, and seeing, you know, what can be done. For both of you, I am curious, I wonder if we can get a little bit more into the nuts and bolts of how you mentor and maybe just unpack the process a little bit more.

Gillian Strudwick: So it’s, it’s interesting because I’m not sure that I think about the mechanics on a daily basis of how that, that environment is shaped. But as I think now and reflect on it, I think there’s a few things. So. One is having a open door policy. I know that we’re often in a virtual world. But ensuring that folks feel that they can approach you, um, you approach them, so it’s not just a one way street.

That you find time to connect. I know we’ve all been in situations where we want to speak to someone and they say, okay, three months from now on, you know, Tuesday at 3:15, you got ten minutes. You know, that’s not the way to foster that. Feeling of comfort and being able to come to someone and speak to them, as busy as all of our schedules are.

It’s important to be able to make time and space for folks. The second is the way I think that we actually engage in these conversations. Is it a listening conversation? Is it a conversation that is positive and encouraging? How many times do we say no in that conversation? You know, something to be thoughtful of is just the tone of the overall conversation.

And then the third thing that comes to mind is, uh, what happens next? So connecting people to others who have done work in that space. Thinking through how to navigate within an organization or the external world about how to further the thinking on the idea or to actually start to pursue that idea. So those are the things that really come to mind as sort of the top three things that I think I engage in to ensure that the folks that I mentor are feeling like they’re in a safe, supportive environment.

Jennifer Urosevic: Yeah, can really, you know, resonate with what Gillian just said there. You know, I think for me, similar to Gillian, is about connections and those really meaningful connections and creating those types of opportunities. And for us, we have 300 staff spread across Canada.

So sometimes it’s impossible to always do the in-person, but I just came back from Vancouver this weekend. I was with our Vancouver team last week. And one of the things that we talked in our theme was about connections, whether it’s virtual and, and creating that and making that time for people. And when you do have that time that you make the most of it, you ask the right questions.

The right questions and create that environment that, you know, people want to share ideas. The other thing that we have really taken an approach on, and this came from our staff surveys, is that we survey our team. So we do, you know, virtual meetings, but then we also do a survey out to our staff. And one of the questions that we ask is, if you were a senior leader, what would you do in the next three months?

And that open ended question comes out with really incredible innovation, things about what they want to see from their employment perspective, but things that they also want as a challenge and a solution to a situation that they’re dealing with. And so as Gillian was kind of talking about the different pieces there, I was nodding because I really resonated with that, that I think that we have to create different avenues for people to communicate with us and with their, with their management team or with their colleagues as well.

And when they start to see. And when our staff start to see the actions turn into programs or solution focus, they get really excited and then we need to communicate back and celebrate that this idea came from this region, this person, so that it encourages more people to have the confidence to share their ideas

Katie Bryski: For both of you, it sounds like it’s a real focus on opening up, right? Like you’re not focused on “what can’t we do” – Gillian, to your point. Like how many times do you say no? It’s, “What is possible?” and then, “What could be next after that? “

Jennifer Urosevic: I get really excited as you talk about that because it really is, you know, yes, there’s things that we can’t do because of privacy or laws and things like that But there’s always a way to incorporate that opportunity into something that we’re doing. And you know we’ve talked a lot about virtual care and how we deliver services through various technologies or leverage technologies to do things, in that, oftentimes, it’s just that openness of people being really flexible and knowing it might not be perfect the first time but to keep refining that solution.

Katie Bryski: So I’d like to broaden this out beyond your teams. Throughout the conversation we’ve been talking a lot about community and co-design. So I’m curious about why this is so important for you both, and what are some of the ways that you’re able to bring patients, families, caregivers, clients, others into the innovation process?

Gillian Strudwick: So I’m a huge fan of the line, nothing about me without me. I think outside of the health sphere. The big tech companies spend millions, probably more than that, on the design and working with the users to figure out what will be the easiest to use so that there’s great uptake and engagement. And as we think about our health space, to be able to access health care and many different facets of care journeys, we need to have a certain level of digital literacy.

We need to be able to interact with technology. And if I think back to the early days of the pandemic, if we went for a PCR test, we often, that was the only way to get your result was to log on to a portal. And so I’m a huge advocate for co design because I think that’s the way we are to be successful in this space.

In terms of the ways to actually do this, there’s lots of ways and they vary, of course, depending on the organization and and you know, who’s launching. So, you know, big hospital academic centers may have a lot of resources in this space. Others may not. So there’s going to be different ways of doing that engagement.

I think first and foremost is having a pulse on what the patients or whoever’s actually using the actual technology, what’s important to them, how’s it working for them. So having a continuous opportunity for feedback and then getting really upstream in terms of even before we launch something, whether it’s even a good idea to launch that thing in the first place.

So working with the caregivers, the patients, whoever it’s potentially designed for, and is there a problem that we would be solving by introducing this, this technology in the first place? Really, if we think about the technology life cycle and everything that we do to support it, patients, caregivers, or, or clinicians can really be a part of a lot of these structures if we find a way to bring them in.

We make sure that we’re open to it and we, we bring them in and support these individuals and being part of the team, being respectful of when we have meetings and compensation and all of these important components, but that it never stops, that we’re always having this opportunity for feedback.

Jennifer Urosevic: You know, I was nodding as well and thinking about continuous improvement and when you bring somebody in early on in the development or the deploying of something new, the energy that comes out of there and the successful outcomes, it sets the whole program up for success. We launched a few years ago, you know, a redesign of our service delivery model. And one of the core things in sort of our research, the fundamental piece that kept coming up is having somebody throughout a journey.

And so we redesigned how we were going to do this. And, you know, our staff, clients and caregivers came up with the term client navigation, which now is, you know, a core function that follows a client throughout the entire journey. And that’s when we really started to really look at every individual is coming to us.

They may all have in common that they are blind or have some degree of vision loss, but how their vision impacts their daily life is very different. So when this organization was launched. Our mission, we incorporated something into our mission that I think fundamentally talks about that patient centered care approach, because it’s not about what the organization wants to do for people.

The mission is that Canadians can live the life that they choose. So it’s not my goals, it’s the person’s goals, and it’s about their, the family unit holistically. Um, and I’m so proud of that language because I think It really defines, right from the onset of somebody scrolling through a website or social media and learning about what we do and who we are, is that the client centered piece and that design from, you know, their client goals to organizational strategic planning is embedded in all of those aspects.

So we have a Client and Family Advisory Committee, We have a workforce where 20 percent of our workforce have lived experience. And so it’s really important. And I, and I think, again, we just keep trying to create those opportunities to learn more and listen more so that we can achieve the things that our clients need and want.

Shelagh Maloney: You know, language is important, and I’m glad that you mentioned that, because the way we say things and what we say is really important, and, and Gillian, you talked too about, you, you bring the patients in, and you bring the clinicians in, and the end users in, but one of the things that I’m really catching is, is both of you, it sounds like you’re, you’re just brilliant at not only creating those safe spaces, but for those who are curious, and especially if somebody’s young in their careers, like, You’re a little bit shy.

So giving people the opportunity and the space and the feeling that if I use my voice, somebody will listen and then acting on that and then acknowledging when a good idea comes where it comes from and providing that recognition and encouraging. So it’s like that cycle of innovation that you’ve created, which is so empowering and helpful.

And so I think, you know, people will be very fortunate to have those kinds of experiences in their work lives, especially if they’re starting their careers and, and having that attitude and culture around them is so important.

Katie Bryski: Yeah, you know, I completely agree. And I think this loops back nicely into the idea of being a mentor.

And maybe we can close the conversation by asking you both to turn your mentoring back on yourselves. And if you could go back and give a piece of advice to your early career self.

Gillian Strudwick: I can think of a piece of advice I give to myself. So that is, um, you’re going to fail. And you’re going to fail a lot. And you need to reframe your thinking around that.

That failure actually can be a really good thing. And to use that as a positive learning opportunity and to say that you’re courageous, you’re trying. And so, um, that is something that I continue to work on, uh, reframing failure as a positive. But let’s embrace it and get used to it.

Katie Bryski: You know, it’s comforting to know that we are always working on ourselves. And I think you draw a really great point about, we will always fail, but the way that we choose to embrace and grow and learn from failure is still our choice, which is very empowering. Uh, so thank you, Gillian. And Jen?

Jennifer Urosevic: I think the piece of advice that I would give to myself is, be open, be open to opportunities and say yes more.

And I think for the future of, for myself and sort of my career journey, as well as for our organization, we need to integrate research more into the work that we do and to demonstrate. So we talked about the eye health screening initiative, which we partnered with the university to do the outcome evaluation research on this.

We’re now presenting this at conferences, sharing, you know, our expertise and our findings, um, in this so that, you know, the program can grow. I would say the same thing with some of the other work that we’re doing around how we’re integrating technology into our day to day core work of our clinical frontline service delivery.

And the evidence that that builds and the credibility will show, I would say, more globally, the importance of vision rehabilitation and the importance of it being integrated into the continuum of health care. So for me, that’s the next journey for me as a leader, as well as for our organization.

Katie Bryski: Well, thank you so much for being here.

We’ve really enjoyed the conversation. And I know that I am left with a lot to think about. Innovation is a journey, innovation is a mindset, a process, and innovation is something that is very much a team. Effort and a collaborative effort.

Shelagh Maloney: And let me add my thanks as well. I think obviously you two are incredible leaders that have created a culture of innovation and an environment really, really appreciate letting us know a little bit about you today and what makes you tick and kind of environment that you live in.

And who motivated you in earlier in your career, so appreciate it very much. So,

Katie Bryski: So what’d you think, Shelagh?

Shelagh Maloney: I just loved hearing from Gillian and hearing from Jen, and they’re clearly passionate leaders. And I love the idea of encouraging people. Especially young people or people earlier in their career, because you do, you are always a little bit intimidated by these leaders and, you know, they have such great accomplishments, but they just really feel to me that they’re authentic, genuine leaders who, who care about improving the system and who care about mentoring their teams and their staff.

And it kind of reminded me as well as that when you’ve got a good mentor and you recognize what they did for you, it’s that paying it forward and doing that for others. And I think these women just naturally have that gift and do that. And it would be interesting to talk to some of their mentees. But I’m sure you’d get some really great feedback.

Katie Bryski: Yeah, I bet. And yeah, it’s that idea that the mentorship doesn’t conclude when, you know, you go your separate ways. It really concludes when the mentee becomes the mentor themselves. That’s actually the last phase of the process, which I think is beautiful and so evident in this conversation. For me, it was really, I was really struck by the emphasis on how much relationships matter to innovation.

I think it’s again, very easy to think of, you know, the tech, but it was really the way they’re able to create trust with their teams. Obviously communication was very important to their innovative processes, inclusion, celebrating like a diversity of perspectives. So, you know, we said a little bit about innovation as a team effort, but I really think it’s, it’s even deeper than that.

It’s innovation being fundamentally rooted in relationships and caring about people, right? It’s about those unmet needs.

Shelagh Maloney: Yeah. It’s a culture. Innovation is not tech. It’s not doing cool, fancy things. It’s creating a culture that allows for cool, fancy things to happen that are going to make a difference.

Katie Bryski: And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. We will be back with a new episode next month. Right here on Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada podcast. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Digital Health Canada members can continue the conversation online in the community hub.

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