About Us

Empowering collaboration and patient-driven equitable care

Launched in 2020 and gaining altitude, TRANSFORM HF is an Institutional Strategic Initiative created in joint support and partnership with the University of Toronto and the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research.

The ultimate goal is to change the lived experience of heart failure care.

Our Story

All of this requires COMMUNITY.

In February 2021, more than 50 of Canada’s top heart failure researchers and clinicians, as well as patients, met virtually to collectively plan how to transform care. Significant inequities persist in access to quality heart failure care, patient outcomes, and available treatments in communities across Canada. This is due to geography, systemic racism, determinants of health, health system and care model design and policy choices. For Indigenous people in remote and even urban settings, there is a particularly urgent need to provide equitable access to high-quality care.

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Equitable care anytime, anywhere: powered by technology

Technology is transformation. Biosensors, remote monitoring, point-of-care testing and digital health enable care that is personalized, adapted and local. By involving decision-makers, communities and patients in the research and technology design we ground new tools and treatments in lived experience. Patients have agency and choice in their care while minimizing disruption in their lifestyle.

Technology bridges distance and, ideally, gaps in expert heart failure, primarily centralized in large cities and research centres. Those in rural or remote communities must travel for treatment and aftercare and even those near  urban centres need support between epidodes of care. Heart failure is a time-critical disease for which delayed or unavailable treatment worsens outcomes. TRANSFORM HF catalyzes technology development, training and innovative solutions to close these gaps – of distance, of understanding and recognition, of access, and of quality.

Our MISSION

Our mission is to enable patients to become more active in their own health and increase equitable access to specialized cardiac care by uniting a trans-disciplinary, multi-sectoral team of experts, patients, and communities in the development of innovative technologies and co-creation of proactive, personalized, and decentralized models of heart failure care.

Our growing network will confront our grand challenge to create both a translational pipeline of innovative approaches and an interdisciplinary community committed to implementing collaborative new solutions respectful to all Canadians.

Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research Labs

Our vision:
Digital technologies for equitable access to personalized HF care

Our Goals

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Explore and translate new technologies and innovations into clinical practice, enabling patients to recover and live at home.

This goal is focused on creating advances in biosensors, microtechnologies, and AI that continuously monitor vital signs and respond to treatments to enable greater access to personalized care.

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Implement new models of HF care grounded in community-based participatory research, Indigenous ways of knowing, and patient experience to increase equitable access.

This goal aims to leverage technological innovation, clinical expertise, and patient experience to reimagine HF care and dissolve barriers to equitable access to high-quality care.

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Forge collaborations and foster expertise by delivering training programs that span disciplines and sectors. 

TRANSFORM HF will foster expertise and world-class training in translational, transdisciplinary HF research by providing access to funding opportunities and a suite of professional skills development workshops.

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Build, engage, and sustain the TRANSFORM HF network, its profile, and impact.

We are committed to establishing robust governance structures, promoting connectivity among our decentralized members, aiming to ensure efficient and effective pathways for shared learning and action, as well as encouraging network growth and diversification.