CHIA awards honour individuals, organizations

VANCOUVER – The annual Canadian Health Informatics Awards (CHIA) were announced at a gala event last month, as part of the eHealth 2018 Conference and Trade Show. The awards honour digital-health leaders and visionaries who are re-engineering and improving healthcare delivery in Canada today.

The winners are:

John Chen, Vice-President, Finance and Support Services, CFO, Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences. Mr. Chen (pictured) was awarded the Leadership in Health Informatics Award for heading the development of the first-ever “Patient Portal” in mental-health. The system enables patients to access their medical records, communicate with their providers, request prescription renewals, and schedule appointments.

Payal Agarwal, Innovation Fellow at Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care, was awarded the Steven Huesing Scholarship. The scholarship is named for the founder of the association now called Digital Health Canada, and reflects the spirit, dedication and innovation Steven Huesing brought to health informatics for more than 40 years.

Amelia Chauvette, Thompson Rivers University, William Lake (BC) Campus, was awarded the Canadian Nurses Foundation’s Dr. Kathryn J Hannah Nursing Informatics Scholarship, which recognizes the crucial role that nurses play in healthcare.

Bailey Griffin, Manager, Virtual Care Program, Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WIHV), won the Emerging Leader in Health Informatics Award, which is awarded to a person displaying notable qualities of leadership while still in the early years of their career.

Greg Leake, Executive Director, Virtual Care Strategy at the BC Ministry of Health, accepted the Innovation in Adoption of HI Award on behalf of the BC Home Health Monitoring Initiative, a provincial virtual care program that uses remote patient monitoring technology to enable patients with chronic conditions to monitor and share their health information from home.

Lisa Saffarek, Senior Specialist, Virtual Care & Telehealth, Island Health, Vancouver Island Health Authority, was awarded the Excellence in Telehealth Award for her ongoing work delivering patient-centric care for people with multiple chronic conditions in the comfort of their home.

The Project Implementation Team Award went to the Dovetale Project at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. ITAC Health established the Project Implementation Team Award to recognize a healthcare company and client team that successfully implemented a health-IT solution at a healthcare organization, honouring the collaborative private and public sector team effort.

imTEEN (including WeUsThem, Dr. Stan Kutcher, The Sandbox Project and TELUS Health), an app that empowers youth to track and take care of their mental health on a daily basis, won the Patient Care Innovation Project Team Award. ITAC Health established the Patient Care Innovation Project Team Award to recognize a team that has successfully implemented a solution that has positively impacted on patient care in innovative ways.

For successfully implemented a solution that has provided a complete patient record in a provincial region that is now available to all health providers in the patient’s circle of care, Alberta’s Community Information Integration (CII) was awarded the Project Team Innovation and Care Delivery Award. ITAC Health established this award to recognize a healthcare Company and client team that has successfully implemented a new innovative health-IT solution at a healthcare organization.

Tectonic, the Canadian Enterprise Corporate Citizenship Award winner, has demonstrated outstanding achievement in supporting and participating in industry conferences and events, academic institutions, and publications, and has extensively volunteered on many projects and initiatives, and contributed to the development of health information standards, emerging trends, success stories and best practices.

Orion Health, the Multinational Corporate Citizenship Award winner, has demonstrated their commitment to supporting the HI and Digital Health Community by presenting top quality papers and abstracts, delivering valuable topical workshops, supported publications, and extensively volunteered resource time to projects and initiatives.

The CHIA Gala is is hosted by Digital Health Canada (formerly COACH: Canada’s Health Informatics Association) and ITAC Health.