Why CaRDM Eq?
Cardiovascular care in Canada is fragmented, low-tech, uncoordinated, and reactive, with a limited ability to keep pace with the staggering health and socioeconomic burdens of cardiovascular disease. Profound disparities exist in access to and provision of cardiovascular care across Canada’s vast geography, with inequity even more pronounced in structurally disadvantaged groups.
Digital health innovations such as remote diagnostic and monitoring technologies hold promise for underserved/isolated communities, yet unequal access and barriers to technology can contribute to further disparities. To bridge this digital divide, innovations must be designed with a health equity lens that considers the end user and a suite of geographic, socioeconomic, cultural, and regulatory factors.
Growing demand for inclusive, accessible cardiovascular digital health tools creates a need for highly qualified personnel with unique technical skills to ideate, validate, and translate remote monitoring and diagnostic technologies, as well as interdisciplinary professional skills toeffectively collaborate and integrate health equity at each development phase.
The CaRDM Eq training program will equip HQP with the skills and perspective to meet market demand for impactful digital health technologies designed for equity. CaRDM Eq will:
- Respond to the clear, growing national need for digital health innovations that optimize healthcare delivery and reach underserved communities
- Contextualize the burgeoning field of digital health technology within the socially pervasive frameworks of inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and anti-racism
- Leverage an existing multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral network of world-leading cardiovascular technology developers, clinicians, health informaticians, and industries within one of North America’s fastest growing innovation hubs
DID YOU KNOW?
It’s estimated that the current demand for digitally skilled labour in the health and biotechnology industry in Canada has reached 119,000 open positions. Current labour shortages are only expected to grow!
Graduates of CaRDM Eq will be well-equipped for these roles.
DID YOU KNOW?
The internationally accepted ‘Quadruple Aim’ framework for healthcare improvement was amended in 2021 to a Quintuple Aim, with health equity as a fifth element. In response, Ontario’s provincial healthcare bodies have integrated inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and anti-racism into their frameworks.
Professionals who have the skills to design for equity are in increasing demand.
Program Objectives
- Deliver technical training in cardiovascular digital health innovation.
- Develop professional skills to design for equity.
- Provide experiential learning opportunities in designing for equity.
- Facilitate mobility between institutions, disciplines, and sectors.
Research Areas
- Field-ready point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices for rapid and ultrasensitive measurements of gold-standard and novel cardiovascular biomarkers in blood.
- Wearable and embedded sensors to enable at-home monitoring of cardiovascular function for improved patient outcomes.
- Digital health implementation
Career Pathways
Future career possibilities for CaRDM Eq’s graduates are wide-ranging and in-demand, driven by an increasing burden of cardiovascular disease on Canadian health systems, advances in digital health propelled by COVID-19, and increasing pressure on government bodies and private companies to integrate health equity into care delivery and tools.
It is estimated that the current demand for digitally skilled labour in the health and biotechnology industry in Canada has reached more than 100,000 open positions. This labour shortage is only expected to grow.
With technical and professional skills as well as hands-on experience, graduates of CaRDM Eq’s value-added training program will be well-equipped to thrive in industry, government, and academia. Potential career streams include:
- Medical devices (i.e. point-of-care diagnostic instruments and tests, wearable design and development, digital diagnostic devices)
- Digital health
- Health consulting and health policy
- Clinical research
- Basic science and AI
CaRDM Eq Definition of Research Excellence
CaRDM Eq recognizes that research excellence goes beyond traditional measurements of scientific merit to embrace a diversity of expertise, individuals, ideas, perspectives, and methodological approaches that have relevant real-world impact for all.
To us, research excellence includes:
- Collaborative approaches/teams that span disciplines, career stages, and experiences to consider diverse perspectives.
- Respectful and meaningful co-development with communities and people with lived experience, and appropriate and timely involvement of stakeholders.
- Integration of a health equity lens to all stages of research, including active elimination and mitigation of biases.
- High potential for societal impact through research translation/commercialization.
- Implementation of knowledge mobilization strategies for the accessible communication of findings and implications.
CaRDM Eq’s Commitment to IDEAA
The CaRDM Eq training program has been designed with inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and anti-racism (IDEAA) at its core. It is our priority that CaRDM Eq provide opportunity for all students, faculty, people with lived experience and collaborators to thrive.
We strive to ensure our trainee recruitment, mentorship, and training environments attract and foster a diverse group of individuals and provide safe, supportive, and accessible research environments. Our funds support research that is inclusive and seeks to have impact for all communities and individuals, seeking to reduce inequities and ensure equitable access to health for all. An IDEAA Committee, chaired by Prof. Ogata, guides the implementation of CaRDM Eq’s IDEAA strategy to support these efforts and drive continual growth.
NSERC Acknowledgement
The Translating Cardiovascular Remote Monitoring and Diagnostic Technologies for Health Equity (CaRDM Eq) is a CREATE training program funded by NSERC that will train the next generation of digital cardiovascular health innovators to design for equity.
We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Nous remercions le Conseil de recherches en sciences naturelles et en génie du Canada (CRSNG) de son soutien.
