Author

Executive Director of Education, Technology & Innovation, UHN

Dr. David Wiljer is the Executive Director of Education, Technology & Innovation at University Health Network

Big Ideas: Digitally Enabling Education in a Learning System

If you asked a group of monks back in the 13th Century if they thought they would one day be replaced by a machine, I’m sure they would have said, “Are you kidding me? No one has as beautiful penmanship as I do, you can’t replace that with a machine!”

Today, when you ask a group of clinicians or health care educators if a machine could do their jobs, their reactions aren’t entirely different. (Many people concede that a robot could replace some parts of their job, however.)

Paradigms around roles and education in health care are changing, and we’re at a point where we need to ask ourselves these kinds of questions about what the future will look like. Not only whether our jobs will be different, but also how we will adapt in a changing environment, and what caring looks like in a digital world. Even more specifically for those of us in health care education, as technology evolves, we need to start a conversation around what an adaptive health learning system looks like.

A few months ago, my colleague Dr. Brian Hodges gave a Big Ideas talk about technology and compassionate care, and what it means to be compassionate in a digital world. This idea begs the question: in a digital world, are we compensating for a lack of compassion, or is it more compassionate to be using these digital tools because we need to be present for people where they are in an online world?

Questions like this are especially important when we’re talking about digitally-enabling the work that we’re doing and how we adapt to our changing practice, whether as clinicians, educators or learners.

A few years ago, the Institute of Medicine started to develop a framework around building a learning health system and using digital tools in a way that might start to create a digital culture. The framework they provide talks about caring, evidence, science, and, I would say, education.

When thinking about this framework and other similar frameworks, it’s important to keep in mind that building a digitally enabled health learning system brings with it an unprecedented level of data sharing and connectivity. When you start using digital tools for patient care and for learning, you get massive amounts of data at your disposal. The data offer interesting opportunities, but also big challenges around using and sharing that data effectively, not to mention training people to use that data.

Earlier this year, UHN Education hosted a co-design session to have a conversation about how technology is being leveraged at UHN to enhance education and learning, as well as to explore the future of technology-enabled education.

As the session went on, four main challenges appeared:

  1. System integration
    • How can we design integrated, simple, transparent and seamless applications to facilitate collaboration?
  2. Breaking down knowledge silos
    • How can we improve collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organization?
  3. How can we manage ‘data overload’?
    • How can we better use the data to improve the quality of education and personalize learning to individual learning needs or styles at UHN?
  4. How do we make learning fun again?
    • How can we introduce an element of entertainment or gamification to promote increased use?

Overall, the big takeaway we had from this session is that we need to think more about our digital tools and digital experiences to engage people. We’re starting initiatives and projects that will move us forward, including developing a new strategy and integrated solutions for digital learning, as well as additional rounds to share our experiences.

As we adjust to these changing paradigms, there are a few ideas we need to keep in mind, including what an adaptive health learning system looks like, and how we think about the changes to practice that we’re facing. When it comes to data, how does that data have value – to practitioners, to educators and learners, and to patients – and how do we trust that data and make it meaningful?

All of this is to say, as we dig deeper into these issues and ideas, and as we continue to ask these questions, it’s important to continue thinking about the ways our practice and the ways we educate are changing. It’s time to start the conversation about digitally enabling education in a learning system, and imagining what an adaptive health learning system might look like.

This blog post appears as part of the Big Ideas Lecture Series for the Research Institute of Health Care Education. Big Ideas explores simulation, artificial intelligence, telesimulation and e-health innovation, among others. The series brings together experts to share insights into emerging issues and trends, to advance understanding of issues affecting health care education, research, practice and society, and to support the research and work produced at the Research Institute of Health Care Education.

For more information about the Big Ideas Lecture Series, contact researchinstitute@michener.ca.

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