Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Background In Canada, healthcare is rich with potential to improve how we learn, use evidence, and provide care. Learning Health Systems (LHS) offer a way to connect these processes, but efforts to implement LHS approaches often operate in isolation. This means valuable lessons aren't shared widely, limiting the opportunity for broader healthcare transformation. What We Did In June 2024, the Learning Health Hub held its first-ever virtual symposium. This event brought together patients, healthcare workers, researchers, policymakers, and others involved in LHS work across Canada. The goal was to understand the strengths of LHS efforts, identify challenges, and spark collaboration to make a bigger impact on our healthcare system. What We Learned Participants highlighted five big challenges: ensuring equity, engaging patients meaningfully, improving leadership and decision-making, overcoming barriers to implementation, and figuring out how to measure success. From these discussions, three key themes for action emerged: 1. Enabling Environments - Creating systems that support ongoing learning and improvement. 2. Measurement and Evaluation - Measuring progress to ensure LHS efforts are effective. 3. Partnering with Patients, Caregivers, and Communities - Ensuring that those most impacted by healthcare decisions are central to shaping solutions. A common thread across all themes was equity: making sure that healthcare works for everyone by addressing gaps in access and outcomes and promoting fairness at every level. Why It Matters By connecting people and ideas, the Learning Health Hub aims to spark innovation and build capacity for healthcare systems that learn and improve continuously. With a strong focus on collaboration and equity, this work has the potential to make healthcare in Canada more effective, inclusive, and responsive to everyone's needs.