Primary care is entering a new era of AI enabled transformation. While AI scribes have demonstrated the immediate value of reducing administrative burden, they represent only the first step in a much broader shift toward AI as a productivity platform for the entire primary care visit, one that augments what clinicians can do rather than replacing their judgment. 

This session will explore what that platform looks like in practice, and why success depends as much on workflow integration, avoiding new silos, as on the technology itself. Done well, this can mean more Connected Care for patients, less burnout for clinicians, and a stronger case for choosing to enter and stay in primary care. 

Through a moderated discussion featuring frontline clinicians and health system leaders, attendees will explore the current and potential future state of AI innovation in primary care, the barriers to responsible scaling, and the actions needed to accelerate adoption across Canada's healthcare system, including what it will take to bring emerging areas like clinical decision support closer to broad adoption. 

As AI adoption accelerates across Canada's healthcare system, questions about who governs the data behind it have never mattered more, both for the organizations building these systems and for the policymakers responsible for overseeing them. This session explores what it means to advance AI in healthcare while ensuring data sovereignty, privacy, and national control over critical infrastructure remain central to Canada’s approach. 

Drawing on his experience helping build sovereign digital infrastructure in Canada and abroad, Craig McLellan, founder and CEO of ThinkOn and an international leader in technology innovation and data security, will examine how Canada is balancing AI innovation with these priorities. He will explore the implications of relying on infrastructure outside Canadian jurisdictional control to manage critical health data, the operational and national considerations at stake, and the policy and regulatory decisions that will shape a secure, sovereign and sustainable digital health system. 

The information needed to provide care to cancer patients in British Columbia is fragmented across health organizations and clinical systems, creating barriers to timely, coordinated, and equitable care.  

BC Cancer is partnering with Canada Health Infoway to give cancer care teams across the province improved real-time access to cancer treatment information, a consolidated view of appointments, and up-to-date primary care patient summaries. Leveraging HALO and other pan-Canadian interoperability standards delivered through British Columbia's CareConnect* platform, the partnership will support better-informed clinical decisions, improve continuity and coordination of care, and contribute to Infoway’s national vision for a more connected health system. 

* CareConnect is British Columbia’s secure, view-only Electronic Health Record, providing 150,000 authorized care providers with 24/7 access to patient information. 

Infoway is proud to include the first Partnership Conference Provincial/Territorial Spotlight, a session designed to allow a Canadian jurisdiction to showcase its digital health initiatives, current priorities, and the principles guiding responsible innovation. This year, we welcome Quebec to the stage:

The digital transformation of Quebec’s health and social services is gaining momentum and paving the way for new ways to collaborate, share information, and support providers. This session will showcase initiatives that demonstrate how digital technologies and artificial intelligence can streamline communication, facilitate access to relevant information, and reduce workloads, allowing providers to devote more time to serving clients and patients. However, a responsible approach is needed to prioritize use cases that generate real value, promote the sound stewardship of public resources, and ensure compliance with the province’s rules regarding AI, including privacy, ethics, inclusion, and a proactive approach.

This session features the winning idea from the 2026 Infoway Innovation Pitch Competition, a national competition that challenged graduate students and recent alumni to bring their early-stage digital health innovations to Canada's senior health leadership. The winning presenter will take to the main-stage to share their vision for advancing digital health and Connected Care in Canada, and what it takes to turn an early-stage idea into a solution with national potential.  

The 2026 Infoway Innovation Pitch Competition takes place November 16 at 3:00 PM PST. Join us to watch four finalists compete live before an expert judging panel. 

Over the past year, Infoway's pan-Canadian AI Scribe Program introduced AI scribes to thousands of clinicians across Canada, helping reduce documentation burden and giving providers valuable time back in their day. This session will explore how the program was brought to life at scale, what it means for clinicians in their day-to-day practice, and what the evidence shows about its impact.

Through the perspectives of Salma Roberts, Dr. Mark Morris, and Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya, the conversation will connect the ambition behind the program with the realities of clinical practice and the evidence from its 12-month evaluation. Together, they’ll explore how AI scribes are changing the way clinicians work, the experience of delivering care, and what this technology could mean for the future of healthcare in Canada.

How can AI help patients access specialty care faster while reducing administrative burden on healthcare teams? As a recipient of Canada Health Infoway's Centre for Clinical Innovation in Digital Health (CIDH) Innovation Grant, the IBD Centre of British Columbia developed and implemented an AI-powered referral management and triage solution to improve access to digestive health services.  

This session will explore how the platform automates referral intake, analyzes referral information, applies guideline-based triage rules, and creates structured referrals directly within the EMR, along with lessons learned implementing AI into a real-world care setting. It will also highlight results to date, including cutting referral triage time from about five minutes to one minute per referral, improved consistency in prioritization decisions, and streamlined administrative, and discuss opportunities to scale this approach to other clinical programs

Interoperability across Canada depends on solutions from many vendors, across many jurisdictions, being built to the same specifications and able to work with one another. The Connected Care Conformance Platform supports that work, giving vendors a structured way to test, validate, and demonstrate that their solutions conform to national specifications, from open sandbox testing through to a formal conformance review and listing on the national dashboard.  

This workshop-style session includes a live demonstration of the platform as it works today, with open Q&A throughout, covering what has been tested so far, peer testing at the Pan-Canadian Projectathon, and how the platform is working with jurisdictions on their own requirements. It closes with a look at the roadmap ahead, giving attendees a sense of where the platform is headed and what to expect in the year to come.

For health information to move seamlessly across Canada, it needs to mean the same thing wherever it goes. A common approach to defining, structuring and sharing health data helps ensure information can be understood and used consistently across systems, care teams and communities. 

Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and Canada Health Infoway are working together to make this possible through the Canadian Core Data for Interoperability (CACDI) and the CA Core+ respectively, two complementary standards helping build the foundations for more connected care across Canada. 

This session will explore the importance of designing CACDI and CA Core+ for practical implementation, the guidance and support needed to encourage adoption across jurisdictions and vendors, and how these shared standards support Canada’s broader interoperability ambitions. 

Join Canada Health Infoway’s Vendor Innovation Program (VIP) team for a look at how investment in local innovation can deliver meaningful benefits for clinicians, patients, and communities. The session will open with an overview of the VIP, highlighting key outcomes from the 2025 cohort of vendor-led demonstration projects, including how projects advanced vendor-healthcare partner collaboration and evidence for scaling. 

This session will also feature a care provider from Okaki Health Intelligence, sharing firsthand experiences with CliniQuill, a VIP-supported AI-enabled clinical documentation solution built for First Nations home care. Attendees will learn how the project has reduced documentation burden, created more time for providers to focus on patients and community needs, and continues to grow and scale across First Nations communities. 

Healthcare students are learning to work alongside AI before they ever set foot in a real clinical setting, and this workshop offers a firsthand look at how. Attendees will get a guided walkthrough of a unique, non-commercial, Canadian academic EHR sandbox environment for healthcare students, developed by the Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada, with support from Canada Health Infoway and other partners.

The session will feature a live demonstration of the recent, novel development of a simulated ambient AI scribe within this learning environment, showing how educators can introduce students to AI powered tools in a safe, controlled setting that includes clinical case-based experiences and evaluation. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions throughout, making this an interactive look at how healthcare education is preparing for an AI enabled future.