Dr. Tania Tajirian, Chief Medical Informatics Officer; Chief of Hospital Medicine, Hospitalist, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
As a physician with a deep practical understanding of compassionate care, Dr. Tajirian has creatively pursued technology as the means to improve quality of care for patients. She is a passionate and innovative advocate for digital health and the power of technology to transform healthcare. Dr. Tajirian’s impact on the field of digital mental health is profound and will undoubtedly continue for years to come. Her initiatives and interventions are exemplary and have received recognition from digital health leaders at national and international conferences.
Dr. Tania Tajirian is Chief Medical Information Officer, Chief of Medicine in Psychiatry Division and Staff Hospitalist at CAMH, and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. She is a physician wellness liaison and her academic interests are quality improvement initiatives, including how to improve efficiencies of practice and reduce EHR/IT related burnout. As the inaugural CMIO, Dr. Tajirian has led the development and implementation of an organization-wide Physician Engagement Strategy which aims to address frustrations and burdens related to the use of the electronic health record system. Through this initiative, Dr. Tajirian has implemented positive hospital-wide changes via the engagement of multiple stakeholders in order to achieve interdisciplinary goals of improving patient care. Since the launch of CAMH’s EHR (I-CARE) five years ago, she has led the streamlining of I-CARE protocols and the design and implementation of new electronic clinical tools and processes, such as clozapine-induced myocarditis monitoring. Dr. Tajirian was instrumental in helping CAMH achieve both HIMSS stages 6 and 7 and most recently the prestigious HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award. In 2021, she was awarded the HIMSS Most Influential Women in Health IT Award.
Dr. Tajirian is recognized as a leader in digital health through her collaboration and involvement with the digital health community and participation in numerous initiatives at the national and international levels. When I have a question about digital health, Dr. Tajirian is the first person I would ask given her wealth of knowledge and understanding of the contemporary trends and discussions in digital health. Dr. Tajirian actively attends numerous conferences in digital health both nationally and internationally. In May 2021, she attended the Clinical Informatics Conference of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), which is internationally attended by many digital health system leaders. As a perfect forum for information and knowledge-sharing across the community, Dr. Tajirian actively networks with others and shares with me new ideas and perspectives that are surfacing amongst other peers and colleagues. She has also been invited to numerous panel discussions about clinician wellness (HIMSS Washington Chapter Webinar) and health equity (Digital Health Canada CHIEF Executive Forum). Most recently, her accomplishments and impact have led her to be recognized as one of the Most Influential Women in Health IT by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
In addition to her role as the Chief Medical Information Officer, Dr. Tajirian actively explores how informatics can better support care delivery through her other position as Chief of Medicine in Psychiatry. For example, as part of the ongoing bottlenecks in communication and commitment towards physician experience, Dr. Tajirian is working on implementing an online scheduling system and improved billing system that can increase efficiency and reduce errors and fatigue. Moreover, with pagers no longer being the norm of communication, Dr. Tajirian is also exploring how communication between physicians can be improved through other types of digital tools. In addition, as a Hospital Medicine Division Executive Member, Site Lead, and Assistant Professor at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Tajirian is also known to be a fantastic mentor to undergraduate, medical, and graduate students interested in digital health.