Attending Digital Health Canada’s Breakfast Meeting

A panel discussion at Digital Health Canada’s Montreal Breakfast Meeting on September 26, 2023 at Courtyard Montreal Downtown.

A few weeks ago I attended Digital Health Canada’s Breakfast meeting in Montréal.

It was a morning full of learning and building new connections.

The topic was centered around the use of AI in healthcare.

Speakers included:

▪️ Danina Kapetanovic, the Chief Innovation Officer at the Integrated Health at CIUSSS West-Central Montreal.

▪️ Sabine Cohen, the Associate Director of Digital Health for CIUSSS West-Central Montreal.

▪️ Adrian Schauer, the founder and CEO of AlayaCare, a home healthcare software company headquartered in Quebec.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversations I had at this event.

There were a lot of takeaways but my one big question for everyone was about communications.

In my experience, a big barrier to the adoption of technology in health is a lack of communication and understanding. The result? Pushback from clinicians and patients.

And as I heard at the event, “It’s not innovation if nobody uses it.”

My question to the panel was at what point are communications teams brought into the project? And at what point is the communications planning and outreach considered?

My opinion⤵️

Communications in the tech sector should never be an afterthought. Your comms teams should not only be called in when it’s time to deploy the tool(s). For a higher chance at success, they should be with you from the outset as you build, test, and deploy.

What do you think? Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach me to connect about a new project or discovery chat.