Our Digital Compassion Work
As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in healthcare, new opportunities and challenges emerge for maintaining compassion, trust, and human connection. Through an ongoing partnership with AMS Healthcare, this work has advanced digital compassion through research, education, patient engagement, organizational guidance, and equity-focused initiatives. Together, these efforts have produced practical tools and resources that support compassionate care in digital healthcare environments.
Genesis of Digital Compassion
Digital compassion emerged from a growing recognition that healthcare was rapidly evolving from face to-face and paper-based interactions to increasingly digital environments shaped by technologies such as electronic health records, virtual care, patient portals, and artificial intelligence. As these technologies became more integrated into care delivery, questions began to emerge about how healthcare systems could preserve human connection, therapeutic relationships, and compassionate care within digital environments.
The concept was first explored in the book Without Compassion, There Is No Healthcare: Compassionate Care in Technological World. In the chapter Caring in a Digital Age: Exploring the Interface of Humans and Machines in the Provision of Compassionate Care, Dr. David Wiljer, Dr. Gillian Strudwick, and Dr. Allison Crawford examined how technology can both support and challenge compassionate care. They proposed that digital tools have the potential to either create distance between patients and healthcare professionals or serve as new pathways for connection, communication, and healing across healthcare ecosystems.
Building on these ideas, a series of scoping reviews explored how compassion is experiences, supported, and challenged in digital healthcare environments. This work examined the opportunities and risks associated with technology-enabled care, highlighting the need for new approaches that help healthcare professionals, organizations, and technologies support compassionate care in an increasingly digital world. Together, this work established an evidence base for digital compassion and informed the research, resources, and initiatives that followed.
Visual representation of the 7 Domains of Digital Compassion. AEI: artificial emotional intelligence. [Source: Delivery of Compassionate Mental Health Care in a Digital Technology–Driven Age: Scoping Review (Kemp et al., 2020)]
Related Publication
- Caring in a Digital Age: Exploring the Interface of Humans and Machines in the Provision of Compassionate Healthcare (Wiljer, Strudwick & Crawford, 2020) [link]
- Defining Compassion in the Digital Health Age: Protocol for a Scoping Review (Wiljer et al., 2019) [link]
- Delivery of Compassionate Mental Health Care in a Digital Technology-Driven Age: Protocol for a Scoping Review (Strudwick et al., 2019) [link]
- Delivery of Compassionate Mental Health Care in a Digital Technology-Driven Age: Scoping Review (Kemp et al., 2020) [link]
Defining Digital Compassion
Building on this growing body of work, a national eDelphi study brought together patients, healthcare professionals, educators, researchers, healthcare leaders, policymakers, and technology experts from across Canada to develop a shared understanding of digital compassion in practice. The study sought to identify the professional competencies and technology attributes needed to support compassionate care in increasingly digital healthcare environments.
The resulting Digital Compassion Framework identified 58 professional competencies and 15 technology attributes organized across seven domains: digital literacy, patient preferences, collaboration and codesign, therapeutic relationships, ethical implications, patient safety, and technology safety. Together, these domains provide practical guidance for supporting compassionate care in digital healthcare environments and emphasize that technology should support, rather than replace, human relationships through trust, communication, collaboration, and shared decision-making.
What Have We Developed?
Building on the Digital Compassion Framework, the project developed a series of practical resources,
tools, and guidance to help translate digital compassion into practice. Through three interconnected
workstreams, this work focused on supporting healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers, and
healthcare organizations in navigating increasingly digital healthcare environments while maintaining
compassionate, person-centered care
The Healthcare Provider Education workstream focused on translating the Digital Compassion Framework into practical learning experiences for healthcare professionals. Through a free, publicly available education program, learners are introduced to key digital compassion concepts and competencies that support compassionate care in technology-enabled environments. The program helps healthcare professionals reflect on their practice while building the knowledge and skills needed to use digital technologies in ways that strengthen therapeutic relationships and human connection.
The Patient & Caregiver eToolkit workstream focused on ensuring that patients and families have the resources needed to actively participate in digitally enabled care. Co-designed with patient and family advisors, the eToolkit provides practical guidance on building relationships with healthcare providers, communicating preferences, collaborating in care decisions, and connecting members of a patient’s circle of care. The resource empowers patients and caregivers to navigate digital healthcare experiences with greater confidence and agency.
The Healthcare Organizational Principles workstream focused on the organizational conditions needed to support digitally compassionate care. Through engagement with healthcare leaders across Canada, the project generated a set of principles and recommendations that explore how leadership, culture, policies, workforce development, safety, and health equity can be embedded within digital transformation efforts. These principles help organizations consider how technology implementation can remain aligned with compassionate, person-centered care.
What We’ve Been Working On
Digital Compassion and Equity
As digital compassion continued to develop, questions emerged about how digital health technologies and services are experienced by different individuals and communities. In partnership with the Equity in Health Systems Lab, this project explores how factors such as access, inclusion, and lived experience shape interactions with digital care and influence experiences across the healthcare system.
Through Critical Dialogue for Action, patients, community members, healthcare professionals, and researchers work together to identify opportunities for more inclusive and responsive approaches to care. Insights from this work continue to inform how digital compassion can be applied across diverse populations, communities, and healthcare settings.
Impact
The work from this initiative has helped establish a shared language, framework, and evidence base for understanding compassion in digital healthcare environments. By translating research into educational programs, patient resources, organizational guidance, and equity-focused initiatives, this work has created practical tools that support patients, healthcare professionals, and health systems navigating an increasingly digital future. As healthcare continues its digital transformation, these contributions help ensure that technological innovation remains grounded in human connection, compassionate care, and equity.
Funding
This work is generously supported by Associated Medical Services (AMS) Healthcare.
Thank you for your interest in our research. If you would like to learn more about our work and publications, or have any questions or comments, we welcome the opportunity to connect with you.
