Annual Quality and Safety Symposium highlights digital health

Clinical teams, quality improvers, educators, researchers, and patient and family partners gathered at Mount Sinai Hospital to hear presentations from keynote speakers and to celebrate achievements in quality and safety improvements over the past year.

The event kicked off with a presentation from keynote speaker, Dr. Amol Verma, Clinician-Scientist at St. Michael's Hospital, Provincial Clinical Lead at Ontario Health and Temerty Professor of AI Research and Education in Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Verma spoke about a study he led on machine learning–based AI early-warning systems. The system monitored patients at high risk of unexpected death or transfer to an intensive care unit in real-time and flagged care teams if they needed to check on patients early. Although Dr. Verma’s study showed improved outcomes in patient mortality, he noted there are current limitations to deploying AI including reliability, unpredictability, fairness, and information overload.

“We need to learn to work with these disciplines, but to also make sure that everything we’ve learned about medicine over the last 50 to 100 years isn’t forgotten in the process,” said Dr. Verma. “We have to make sure that culture gets brought in in a thoughtful way.”

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The importance of incorporating new technologies in health care, and not depending on them, was also emphasized by Brina Ludwig-Prout, member of Sinai Health’s Patient Safety and Quality Committee of the Board and Co-Chair of the Advisory Committee for The Ontario Caregiver Organization’s Essential Care Partners Support Hub. Ludwig-Prout spoke about how digital health resources have been essential for herself and other caregivers. Patient portals, wearable technology, wellness checks, and AI note-taking are some of the ways that technology is helping caregivers. “Technology can be a massive tool for caregivers – when used right,” said Ludwig-Prout. “You can’t use technology without emotional and social care. An integrated care approach is essential.”

Anchoring the event was the presentation of quality improvement projects that were completed by clinical and non-clinical teams across Sinai Health.

“Quality is the totality of everyone in the room – it’s how we deliver care,” said Dr. Gary Newton, President and CEO of Sinai Health. “It’s important that we keep coming together, each from our different domains, to share and learn from each other. Quality is a destination, not a process, and we are not yet at the end of the road.”

The top abstract for the Quality Track was awarded to a team that introduced a method to increase the use of on-demand interpreter services to allow clinicians and patients to communicate with patients with limited English proficiency in their preferred language. The project was conducted in the emergency department demonstrating use of trained medical interpreters was associated with a positive impact on patient experience and outcomes.

The top abstract from the Innovation Track went to a team that redesigned and operationalized a novel airborne isolation operating room. In this process, the team collaborated with broad stakeholders from surgical services, building services, infection prevention and control, and patient flow to identify ways to improve current processes by highlighting the necessity of collaboration in early operational planning stages. This work has garnered great interest from peer hospitals across the city looking to conduct similar work.

“There’s not a lot of health-care facilities with such specialized rooms, and so our experience creates a learning opportunity for the facilities that are in the process of design and construction,” said Sarah Wells, Program Lead in the Infection Prevention and Control Department.

The symposium closed with a number of awards being presented, including the Good Catch Awards, and the Sinai Health Awards of Excellence in Quality and Safety Awards.

“It’s an honour to have the opportunity to recognize the amazing work, depth of commitment and devotion of providers that collaborate every day and bring about amazing outcomes across the organization,” said Dr. Christine Soong, Medical Director of Quality. “Sinai Health is doing exemplary work in quality and safety and I’m grateful to be a part of this team.”