The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has signed a memorandum of collaboration with Vital, a new collaborative health data platform based out of Unity Health Toronto, focusing on disease surveillance, building capacity with real-time data, and developing AI tools for outbreak forecasting and emergency management.
Unity Health Toronto shares that initial areas of focus will be on using hospital data to detect clusters of symptoms for areas such as opioid toxicity and respiratory viruses, building capacity to identify and intervene on public health concerns, and developing AI tools for public health surveillance, emergency management, and the prediction of outbreaks.
Nancy Hamzawi, president of PHAC, said: “This partnership will allow public health experts at PHAC to leverage Vital’s data and AI capabilities to enhance PHAC’s ability to more quickly and effectively understand public health trends and provide better information to support people across Canada in making decisions for their health.”
“This partnership reflects what Unity Health Toronto does best: bringing together equity-driven care, public health leadership and responsible innovation to improve health for the people and communities we serve,” said Altaf Stationwala, president and CEO of Unity Health Toronto. “We are proud of the Vital platform that was developed here at Unity Health Toronto and to work with PHAC to help build a stronger, more responsive public health system for Canada.”
Wider trend: Health data
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (ABUHB) has shared an update on its use of data in clinical decision making, service planning, and performance improvement, noting the role of tech and digital skills in enabling staff to both access and use reliable information. Use of the National Data Resource (NDR) has “transformed how the directorate understands its own performance”, according to ABUHB, with head of digital service management Gareth Moran sharing: “By bringing together operational data from key areas of the ITSM platform, it enables trends, service pressures and improvement opportunities to be identified earlier, supporting targeted interventions and evidence-based decision making. These insights are now embedded throughout DDaT’s governance structures, providing greater visibility, accountability and assurance at all levels.”
A partnership has been launched between the DATA-CAN data research hub for cancer hosted at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and the West Midlands Secure Data Environment to support access to high quality cancer data for researchers. The partnership draws on pseudonymised patient data from patient records at major cancer centres across the UK, including on diagnosis, treatments, test results, and patient outcomes. The first dataset has been uploaded to the WM SDE, with three further datasets currently in development, Leeds Teaching shares.
An AI spin-out from the University of Birmingham has launched, with an aim to speed up the process of extracting data from EHRs to support medical researchers and reduce the time for drug safety and effectiveness studies. Dexter AI is based on a software developed by a team from the Birmingham Department of Applied Health Sciences, Professor Krishnarajah Nirantharakumar, Dr Krishna Gokhale, and Professor Joht Singh Chandan. Its website outlines the potential for use in the design of epidemiological studies, cohort identification, emulating clinical trials with real world data, automating clinical audits, and enabling population health management. The team has developed a web-based application that users can “take to their data”, meaning data can be extracted and analysed without the need to transfer it to another platform.
