For almost 100 years, Montreal’s Notman House was home to St. Margaret’s Home for Incurables, a traditional 50-bed hospital. Today, the historic property is a tech innovation hub and event space where Digital Health Canada recently hosted a breakfast event to discuss “Digital Health in Canada: Digital Technologies and the Future of Healthcare”. The contrast highlights how far we’ve come in delivering healthcare to Canadians, and how rapidly change is taking place in the digital health ecosystem today.
Focus on Quebec innovation
The goal of the event was to connect with digital health professionals in Quebec, and to identify common challenges and opportunities from across Canada, with a focus on Quebec innovation. Attendees would learn about local innovation programs and opportunities, and gain insights into digital health partnerships and collaborations from other provinces to spark new ideas and drive progress in Quebec and beyond.The morning consisted of two panel presentations, plus discussions and bilingual Q&A.
Panel One: Provincial and National Digital Health
After an intro from Digital Health Canada CEO Mark Cassleman, the panel (Luc Sirois, Diane Côté, Scott McMillan) discussed what they are seeing in digital health provincially and nationally, and how national collaborations might assist with facing challenges and taking advantage of opportunities.
Panel Two: Hosting Medical Data in the Cloud: Utopia or Reality?
This panel (Mustapha Ben Abdesselam, François Rainville, Alex Iancu and moderator Scott McMillan) looked at organizations working to revise current IT practices to integrate the public cloud into operation management. This transition to the new hybrid reality of the cloud is leading people to think about the evolution of technology and their own role within the organization: a continuous, and almost inevitable, quest to become more agile, faster and more efficient.
Breakfast in Montreal was made possible by Montreal #digitalhealth leaders Diane Cote, President and CEO, MEDTEQ; Scott McMillan, President – PDG at le Groupe – Cercle – Group; Luc Sirois, Executive Director at Prompt, Hacking Health co-founder; Mustapha Ben Abdesselam, Director of Technological Direction, CHU Ste-Justine François Francois Rainville, Solution Architect, PCD Solutions Inc.; Alex Iancu, Vice-President, Development, Logibec; and the entire team at le Groupe – Cercle – Group. Event sponsors were Novari Health, and Gevity (Gold) and Cerner Corporation (Bronze).
