This document provides an overview of an introductory health informatics course. It introduces the teaching team - Michael Millar, the course instructor, Kristy Munroe and Sarah Sawaya, the course mentors. It asks students to introduce themselves and provides background on the instructors. It discusses why information and communication technology (ICT) is important in healthcare, noting that healthcare relies on accurate information. The document outlines the plan for the course term, which is to help students understand how ICT systems work and the complexities of ICT implementation in healthcare. It indicates that course collaboration will occur via Slack rather than Blackboard/Quercus.

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MHI1001H - Michael Millar
MHI 1001
Course Overview

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Agenda
● Introductions
○ Meet the teaching team
○ Getting to know you
● Course Expectations
● Why is ICT Important in Health Care
● What to Expect & Course Collaboration

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Introductions

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About Me
Michael Millar
Course Instructor
● CEO & Founder, Verto Health
● Prior AVP of Business Intelligence at Home
Trust Company, eHealth Strategy Lead at
Ministry of Health
● BSc. Computer Science; MHI 2011 Alumni
● Michael.millar@utoronto.ca
Strategy enthusiast; entrepreneur; industry
hopper; critical optimist; driven by pragmatic
solutions

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About Me
Kristy Munroe
Course Mentor
● VP, Clinical Implementations, Verto Health
● Delivered multiple provincial clinical system
deployments and rollouts; 40+ successful
digital health project go-lives
● Managing a team of 10+ Health Informatics
Implementers
● BAH Health Studies; MHI 2018 Alumni
● Kristin.munroe@utoronto.ca
Implementation closer; Ruthless pragmatist;
Believer in Justice; Team builder; Health policy
nerd; and lover of all pets

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About Me
Sarah Sawaya
Course Mentor
● Senior Project Manager, BenchSci
● Lead clinical implementation projects in
various settings including hospital,
community care, laboratory and private
sector.
● BScH Life Sciences & French Studies; MHI
2020 Alumni
● sarah.sawaya@mail.utoronto.ca
Project Management; Patient experience
advocate; and outdoor enthusiast.

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What About you?
● Quickly let us know:
○ Your name
○ Your education/ professional background
○ A favorite technology you absolutely depend on

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Why is ICT Important in Health Care?

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We Live in an Amazing Time!
● To really appreciate the era we live in, it
helps to look at it from another perspective…
Let’s imagine it from the perspective of
someone living in the 1800s (200 years ago)
● At that time, not only was information a
scarce resource, but it was one of the most
expensive
● Food for thought:
○ 1GB = 1073741824 Bytes ~= 3334 books!

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The New Information Challenge
● Humanity has spent so many eras trying to democratize access to information and
we have widely succeeded (information is cheap and extremely accessible)
● But a new problem has appeared; with the per-unit cost of information at a historic
low the new challenge is in making sure the right content makes it to the
consumer/user
● In the age of “fake news”, you are now at the forefront of the ethical battle around
providing the appropriate information to your users
○ As an examples, something as simple as a user filter can condense a firehose
of information to something meaningful and concise…
○ … but it can also exacerbate confirmation bias creating an echo chamber for
users (e.g. Facebook, Twitter)
● Doctors have seen this fight coming for a while… (Google and the world of alternative
treatments)

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Why is ICT in Health Care Important?
● People often forget that healthcare is information-based:
○ Care cannot be delivered without an accurate diagnosis; based on a set
of targeted observations; that are weighed against a vast knowledge
base
● It is reasonable to say that no healthcare intervention is performed without
a basic amount of information(demographics, diagnosis, etc.) available to
the clinician
● The combination of networks (i.e. the internet) and ICTs have enabled the
low cost and real-time transfer of information; something we now take for
granted

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Course Overview and Collaboration

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Plan for the Term- MHI 1001
By the end of this course you should understand:
How ICT systems work
The complexities of ICTs and ICT implementation in healthcare
The lingo and function of IT professionals
The foundations of what is necessary for ICT implementation projects

14. Course Collaboration
● Tried Blackboard/ Quercus… didn’t work
● Collaboration issues arise from the same
reason why doctors refuse to log into
standalone clinical portals, it’s not part of your
technology vocabulary
● So… we’re using Slack!
● I’ll send out link as an announcement
● My Verto team will be on Slack as well and are
open to answering random (intelligent)
questions about health technology