We are delighted to announce that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has formally signed a Memorandum of Collaboration (MoC) with Vital to explore innovative data initiatives to improve the health of Canadians and strengthen our public health and health system. Vital was funded through the Government of Canada’s AI for All Strategy and provincial governments. The partnership will enable PHAC to harness Vital’s leading capacities for hospital digital data and AI for actionable insights, enhancing public health surveillance and facilitating early interventions.
Key areas of focus include:
- Strengthening disease surveillance by using hospital data to detect clusters of symptoms. Examples include opioid toxicity and lethal contaminants, emerging and known respiratory viruses, and under-treatment and management of chronic disease such as diabetes.
- Building capacity to access near real-time data to identify and intervene on public health concerns as they arise through joint training and shared expertise between PHAC and Vital staff.
- Developing AI tools for public health surveillance, emergency management, and outbreak forecasting.
Joint initiatives will be approached from a learning, knowledge-sharing, and capacity-building perspective based on Vital’s current and future capabilities and data coverage, and PHAC’s leading expertise and mandate to protect the health of Canadians. Furthermore, these initiatives will ensure the highest standards of data privacy and security, promote health equity, and align with Indigenous data governance.
The signing of the MoC was held at Unity Health Toronto, the home of Vital. Key leaders from both PHAC and Vital were present, including Nancy Hamzawi, President of PHAC; Altaf Stationwala, President and CEO of Unity Health; and Dr. Fahad Razak and Dr. Amol Verma, co-leads of Vital and Internists and Vice Presidents of Unity Health.
“By connecting near real-time hospital data for public health innovation in a secure, privacy-preserving way, Vital will help ensure our healthcare systems can respond dynamically to emerging threats while keeping Canadian health data safely governed,” said Dr. Fahad Razak and Dr. Amol Verma, co-founders of Vital, in a joint statement.
“The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is pleased to be partnering with Vital to help improve our public health systems in all parts of the country. 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 make decisions for their health,” said Nancy Hamzawi, President of PHAC.
“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. 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,” said Altaf Stationwala, President and CEO of Unity Health Toronto.