Health Everywhere
Building an ecosystem of innovation in eHealth and mHealth in Alberta
Alberta has pockets of excellence in eHealth (digital health technologies) and mHealth (mobile health technologies), that include novel programs and innovations. However, much of this excellence is disconnected and has tremendous untapped potential for collaboration and commercialization, and wide-spread adoption.
The vision of Health Everywhere is a vibrant eHealth and mHealth ecosystem in Alberta that builds on a foundation of strength in innovation to drive economic and technological growth.
Co-developed with community, industry, and academic stakeholders, Health Everywhere will be a provincial hub of digital health excellence that brings together integrated programs, leading experts, and resources to enable efficient and effective commercialization, spread, and scale of eHealth and mHealth technologies locally and globally.
Contact Us
Visit www.healtheverywherehub.ca for more information.
To get involved, contact health.everywhere@ucalgary.ca.
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This project is funded by the Government of Alberta Major Innovation Fund
Partners
The project includes 10 post-secondary institutions, seven academic based programs, one Indigenous community, two health system organizations, 19 non-profit organizations, 21 industry partners, and 47 team members.
Why Health Everywhere?
We are at a critical and timely moment to transform the eHealth and mHealth ecosystem in Alberta. The last three years of societal disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic have exposed economic vulnerabilities and magnified limitations of our healthcare system. It has also created an environment primed for creative growth and transformative change.
In their 2020-2025 Global Strategy on Digital Health, the World Health Organization says that digital health solutions have a “proven potential to enhance health outcomes by improving medical diagnosis, data-based treatment decisions, digital therapeutics, clinical trials, self-management of care and person-centered care as well as creating more evidence-based knowledge, skills and competence for professionals to support health care.”
Alberta has a unique combination of significant government investment in eHealth infrastructure, areas of expertise and global leadership in eHealth and mHealth, and a rapidly growing group of innovators. We have an opportunity to capitalize on government investments and the calls for health system to lay the foundations for health system transformation and economic diversification.
Research Themes
Health Everywhere is designed to serve as the catalyzing Alberta hub for innovators, health system stakeholders, and researchers providing an integrated network of resources needed to advance eHealth and mHealth technologies.
Health Everywhere will address ecosystem opportunities and gaps identified in provincial/national priorities and by ecosystem stakeholders through four research themes:
Our health care system is siloed. We have a well-integrated acute care system in Alberta, but a network of siloed community-based systems and services. The public needs to be able to move seamlessly across services regardless of where they live, what language they speak, and their health literacy. Projects within this theme will work towards implementing and evaluating sustainable and scalable eHealth and mHealth innovations for seamless care.
Theme leads
Neesh Pannu | npannu@ualberta.ca
Matt James | mjames@ucalgary.ca
Remote monitoring and virtual care tools are characterized by variable effectiveness and limited adoption. Most have mirrored traditional, episodic outpatient visits or been limited to large urban centres. Systems have only scratched the surface of the rich monitoring and communication opportunities offered by mobile health technology.
While consumers use smart phones and monitoring devices to track their diets, activity levels, and engage in seamless communication in their daily routines, they rarely see these benefits integrated into their care.
Albertans living in rural and remote areas, including Indigenous communities, have the greatest need for urgent improvements to remote monitoring and virtual care. Workforce shortages, long travel distances, and facility closures have left rural Albertans feeling like they have little control over their health care.
Theme leads
Mary Brindle | mary.brindle@albertahealthservices.ca
Martin Ferguson-Pell | fe4@ualberta.ca
A thriving and healthy ecosystem is interconnected and builds off its constituent members. While AHS has launched Connect Care, a highly valuable province-wide, facility-based clinical information system, most primary care and community care settings are not included.
The result is a gap in health system integration that results in missed opportunities to access important, and sometimes time-sensitive lifesaving health data. This theme will leverage the expertise of industry leaders in healthcare interoperability, with the goal of establishing a standard framework for eHealth and mHealth interoperability in Alberta.
Theme lead
Tyler Williamson | tyler.williamson@ucalgary.ca
To have a vibrant and dynamic eHealth and mHealth ecosystem, we need a constant pipeline of innovations that address health system needs. This requires identifying resources available, determining what each innovator needs, matching local resources and innovators to meet those needs, and helping source any gaps.
This theme will focus on creating enhanced integration within the ecosystem, including research to better understand the overall ecosystem and how we can iteratively improve it.
Theme lead
Chad Saunders | wsaunder@ucalgary.ca
Foundational principles
The research themes are supported by four foundational principles that transcend all themes and we believe are essential for a thriving ecosystem. They are key foundations for transformational change.
Work guided by these principles will enable us to realize our vision of a vibrant Alberta eHealth and mHealth ecosystem that drives economic and technological growth that is scalable, exportable, and transformative to health systems locally and globally.
Empowering citizen engagement in social innovation
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Promotion of citizen engagement across all activities within the grant to increase the likelihood that eHealth and mHealth technologies will be adopted and have lasting social impact.
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For an eHealth and mHealth ecosystem to reach its full potential, all Albertans, including those in rural and remote areas and who are part of equity-deserving groups need to be engaged and empowered to meaningfully interact within that ecosystem.
Training
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Embedding of training opportunities for highly qualified personnel (HQP) across projects to ensure development and retention of tech talent in Alberta.
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Multi-faceted training approaches, including direct funding to support graduate and undergraduate students and postdoctoral scholars. There are also specific funds for unique training opportunities for HQP, like entrance into supplemental courses or workshops. To avoid duplication of training opportunities, partnerships will be established with groups that are already delivering training to innovators, students, providers, and researchers.
Policy, regulation and ethics
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The current policy and regulatory landscape are a barrier to a high-functioning eHealth and mHealth ecosystem. Virtual care requires access to technology and an ability to use that technology. As a result, a digital divide has been described to characterize the experience that Indigenous and other equity-deserving groups have when accessing and utilizing virtual modalities.
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Work is urgently needed to address policy, funding, privacy, and regulatory oversight challenges to make eHealth and mHealth technologies tools to advance health equity.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (EDIA)
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All activities within the hub will be developed using an equity-based approach to research, focus on addressing economic and health disparities, and recognize individual needs when delivering care and conducting research.
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Reflection and enhancement of equitable access to eHealth and mHealth technologies, improving the health of underserved and equity-deserving communities, and promoting equity and diversity in the eHealth and mHealth technology workforce.
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A wide range of experiences and viewpoints will be represented through the formation of an EDIA Advisory Committee, tasked with working with hub leadership to develop an EDIA Action Plan to provide a foundational basis for program and project work over the duration of the grant.