AI-powered tools are necessary but not sufficient: Building a digitally interoperable future for community-based physicians

Sponsored Session

Room: Ballroom A (Plenary Room)

Despite significant progress in digitizing Canada’s health-care system, most physicians still work in data silos because of ongoing challenges with digital health interoperability and connected care.

Clinicians often cannot access all the health information they need to provide optimal patient care. This gap can create patient safety risks and increase the administrative burden on physicians. Multiple provincial, territorial and national studies have highlighted these challenges.

As Canada moves toward digital health interoperability legislation through Bill S-5, what will family physicians and other community-based clinicians need to thrive? Tools such as AI scribes show considerable promise, as demonstrated by Canada Health Infoway’s national AI Scribe investment program. However, solving interoperability challenges will require more than AI-powered tools. The barriers are not solely technological.

The CMA, CFPC, RCPSC and Canada Health Infoway established a physician-led task force to identify the conditions needed for clinicians to work to their full potential in a digitally connected health-care environment. This session will explore the potential of current and emerging AI-powered tools and examine the changes needed to help physicians and other clinicians succeed in an interoperable health-care system. Participants will also have an opportunity to share their perspectives on the future of connected care in Canada.

This session will:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Engage attendees on shaping a minimum set of conditions that would allow family physicians and other community-based clinicians to participate in a future, interoperable digital health environment

Review key findings from Canada Health Infoway’s national AI Scribe program evaluation

Describe the next phase of the physician-led Digital Health Interoperability Task Force and its role in supporting interoperability policy and legislative change

Speaker:

• Rashaad Bhyat, MD, Senior Clinical Leader, Centre for Clinical Innovation in Digital Health, Connected Care Team, Canada Health Infoway

Presenter Bio:

Rashaad Bhyat, MD

Dr. Rashaad Bhyat is an award-winning family physician with special expertise in Health Informatics and Digital Health, and an accomplished medical communicator. He is Senior Clinical Leader in the Centre for Clinical Innovation in Digital Health (CIDH) within the Connected Care team, at Canada Health Infoway.

Over the past decade plus, he has provided strategic advice to Infoway on numerous key national initiatives across Canada, including AI in health care (AI Scribes), interoperability, virtual care, EMR/EHR adoption, electronic prescribing (PrescribeIT), increasing patient access to health records, clinician-focused digital transformation, and the successful Connected Care Clinician Innovation Grants and Student Scholarship initiatives.

In addition to his medical training, Dr. Bhyat completed a Masters Certificate in Physician Leadership from York University’s Schulich School of Executive Management, a Certificate in Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare from McMaster University, and executive education in Leading Digital Transformation at Harvard Medical School. In 2024, he joined the new Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Medicine as Assistant Clinical Professor, and taking on the role of Digital Health Thread Lead, shepherded the innovative integration of Digital Health into their undergraduate medical curriculum, a first in Canada.

Recently, he co-chaired the Digital Health Interoperability Task Force, a joint initiative of the CMA, CFPC, Royal College, and Infoway, that released its report and recommendations in the fall of 2024. He also co-chaired the CanMEDS 2025 Data Informed Medicine Working Group, for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Currently he practices in a digitally-enabled family medicine clinic in Brampton, Ontario.

---