Montreal, July 9, 2020 – OROT – Connected Health Innovation Hub, is being launched by CIUSSS West-Central Montreal and one of its member facilities, the Jewish General Hospital (JGH), to re-imagine the future of health care. Its role is to pinpoint innovative, efficient and cost‑effective ways of responding to the changing demographics and medical needs of healthcare users. The announcement was made today by Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, the CIUSSS’s President and CEO, whose Strategic Advisor for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Danina Kapetanovic, is spearheading the new venture. OROT takes its name from the Hebrew word for “lights” or “illumination”. “One of the positive consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is that it has forced us to accelerate the adoption of changes in how we deliver health care,” explains Dr. Rosenberg. “We are more determined than ever to bring healthcare services into the 21st century, and OROT is an integral part of our response.”
Since the CIUSSS came into existence just over five years ago, it has made significant strides in broadening access to care, streamlining the trajectory of care, and reducing the fragmentation and duplication of services among its facilities. Given the CIUSSS’s ongoing commitment to identifying weaknesses in the system and implementing improvements, OROT is being introduced to more closely examine problems that became apparent during the pandemic and to introduce changes to further strengthen the delivery of care.
“Our connected care research and innovation hub has a broad mission to imagine and guide the way toward a new era of care,” says Dr. Rosenberg. “It will do this by implementing novel technologies, management practices and partnerships with industry.” The goal is to improve the user experience and to empower users by providing them with information about their care, including the use of the latest forms of digital technology.
Referring to Ms. Kapetanovic, Dr. Rosenberg noted her “two decades of national and international experience, including leadership positions with the United Nations. Danina has an impressive track record in nurturing innovation, building partnerships, developing strategies and policies, and driving greater operational efficiency and effectiveness. I am confident she has the skills to ensure that OROT becomes a driving force behind change in the JGH, our CIUSSS and Quebec.” OROT will transform the healthcare experience through an integrated, user-centric model of research, innovation and implementation, informed by large-scale data science. In the process, it will foster partnerships in the private and public sectors, and these partnerships—within the JGH and the CIUSSS—will strive to innovate, refine and, ultimately, realize a variety of products and services, including software and digital devices. “OROT is focused on co-developing, validating and integrating digital health technologies for value-based healthcare,” says Ms. Kapetanovic. “This will allow us to view the technologies from a unique perspective, prioritize them and align them with our objectives of improving user outcomes and decreasing the cost of care, thereby enhancing value and user satisfaction. We’re going to hit the ground running.”
Working with teams across the CIUSSS including the Digital Health team, Ms. Kapetanovic explains, OROT is fostering such initiatives as:
Testing a vital signs app with Carebook
Experimenting with the Microsoft HoloLens, an untethered, mixed-reality device that enables direct contact to be minimized between staff and users. This will allow the CIUSSS to be better able to provide the best personalized care whenever physical proximity presents an imminent danger
Co-creating a COVID-19 dashboard with Maisha Labs, in order to predict, one week ahead of time, the number of people who will become COVID-19 patients. This will contribute significantly to the improved management of resources
Launching a mental telehealth platform with Equinox to provide users with much-needed access to mental health support services at a distance
Looking ahead, Ms. Kapetanovic says priority will be given to a connected care record; decision support (machine learning and AI) and analytics; virtual care and remote sensing; virtual and augmented reality; personalized medicine; and cybersecurity.
Before joining the CIUSSS earlier this year, Ms. Kapetanovic served as Executive Director of Hacking Health, a global, grass-roots network of innovators committed to creating digital health solutions to benefit citizens, support healthcare systems, and promote economic activity. This network organized 160 hackathons in 63 cities around the world, leading to more than 1,500 innovative projects.
Ms. Kapetanovic also held various leadership positions across the United Nations system, spearheading innovation and public-private partnerships to stimulate positive change internationally.