Program

Join us for registration and a light breakfast before the program begins. This is an opportunity to collect your name badge, settle in, and connect with fellow attendees.

Opening remarks from Dr. Dean Fergusson, OSSU Scientific Director, and Tyler (Ty) Redublo, OSSU Board Member. Dr. Fergusson will also serve as Master of Ceremonies, guiding participants through the day’s program.

Dr. Lisa Dolovich, Chair of the OSSU Board, will introduce Ontario’s Deputy Minister of Health and welcome them to Research Day.

Opening address delivered by Deborah Richardson, Deputy Minister of Health, Ontario Ministry of Health.

Moderator: Colin Macarthur Speakers: Imaan Bayoumi, Eyal Cohen, Andrea Evans, Sophia Lawson, Ashley Quinn, Shazeen Suleman This panel will highlight key issues in equitable access to paediatric healthcare. An overview of the topic will be followed by specific examples of patient-oriented research examining the impact of clinical and social issues on access to care. Specific discussion topics will include children living with complex medical conditions, poverty, and foster care.

Moderator: Brenda Vrkljan Speakers: Aref Alshaikhahmed, Rebecca Ganann, Bahar Karimi This panel explores innovative researcher-community partnerships that are shaping more responsive systems of care for older adults across community and long-term care settings. Featuring projects such as co-designed innovations to support healthy aging through EMBOLDEN and work focused on belonging in long-term care, speakers will share how engaging older adults, caregivers, and community partners can lead to more equitable, person-centred care. Together, these examples highlight how care can be better aligned with older adults’ needs and preferences, as well as the importance of integrating health and social systems to support aging well.

Moderator: Dean Fergusson Speakers: Kevin Kuo, Jennifer Tsang, Aristotle Voineskos, Barb Zelek The growth of pragmatic clinical trials represents a major shift in health research toward evaluating how interventions perform in real-world conditions beyond typical acute care settings. OSSU has promoted and supported the advancement of patient-oriented pragmatic trials across Ontario and across health conditions. This session will focus on the opportunities, benefits, and challenges of conducting large, pragmatic trials in non-traditional settings including community hospitals, mental health and addiction especially in youth and adolescents, and rural and Northern communities.

Moderator: Darrel Manitowabi Speakers: Darrel Manitowabi, Lisa McCarthy, Richard Webster As OSSU looks to the future, this panel will present a vision for three key areas of research. The first presentation will focus on OSSU’s vision for collaborating with Indigenous partners to support the evolution of research with Indigenous communities. The second will explore the expanding scope of patient-centred pharmaceutical services. The third will focus on respiratory disease in children and its impact across the healthcare system.

Enjoy lunch and connect with fellow attendees from across Ontario’s patient-oriented research community.

Dr. Megan Bettle, Director General, Priority Initiatives - Strategy and Management at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, will share an update from CIHR on the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research.

Moderator: Onil Bhattacharyya Speakers: Jennifer Bell, Sharon Johnston, Amol Verma Artificial intelligence is a general purpose technology with enormous potential that has already had some impact on administrative burden, risk prediction and clinical decision-support in health care. Building large datasets to help develop new solutions, living laboratories to test new solutions can enhance this impact, but it also requires ethical and policy guidance to minimize potential risks. This panel will explore recent developments that are driving excitement in the area, potential use cases that could improve the experience of clinicians and patients, and the difficult questions we need to ask to maximize the benefits of AI.

Moderator: John Lavis Speakers/Perspectives: Heather Bullock, John Lavis, Maureen Smith The panel will explore their assessment of where we are in establishing learning health systems (LHSs) in Ontario. They’ll begin by discussing whether it’s fair to say there has been a collapse in expressed demand for evidence in the system, which would imperil ‘gear 1’ in the LHS action framework. They’ll then move on to one exemplar for each of the ‘three legs’ in the LHS ‘stool’: 1) misinformation (from the citizens’ perspective); 2) primary-care attachment (from the perspective of health-system leaders); and 3) investments in evidence infrastructure (from the perspective of research leaders). They will conclude with a focus on possible LHS-related blind spots in our accelerated use of AI in the health system.

This “Lightning Round” panel features recipients of OSSU’s EMPOWER and Partnership Capacity Building Fund funding opportunities. Moderator: Nav Persaud Speakers: Douglas Archibald, Jean-Claude Camus, Terry Hawrysh, Sukhvinder Kalsi-Ryan, Manoj Lalu, Stella Medvedyuk, Barry Munro, Kate Murzin, Kelly O’Brien, Katherine Sawicka, Emily Xia EMPOWER—Engaging Multi-stakeholders for Patient-Oriented Research Wider Effects and Reach—provides end-of-grant knowledge mobilization and dissemination support for completed patient-oriented research projects. The Partnership Capacity Building Fund supports graduate students in meaningfully partnering with patients as members of the research team. Presenters will share their project aims, knowledge translation methods, and outcomes across work focused on advancing equity and healthcare access, patient partnership in health system improvement, translating evidence into practice and education, and patient-partnered research.

Dr. Vasanthi Srinivasan, Executive Director of OSSU, will offer closing remarks and reflect on key themes from the day’s discussions.

Join us for a closing reception and an opportunity to continue the day’s conversations, connect with fellow attendees, and strengthen relationships across Ontario’s patient-oriented research community.