Grant: Catalyst Grant: Quadruple Aim and Equity

Health organizations and systems that collect and analyze data to then apply new knowledge are known as learning health systems. These models are expected to improve patient and population health outcomes by enabling evidence-informed decision-making for patients, providers, and policy-makers. In Canada, many academic, government, and health care institutions have identified the learning health system as their gold standard. Though the concept is appealing, there is little research that reports how this model affects patients, populations, and health systems. In our study, we will measure and report the outcomes of a learning health system model in a northern and rural context. A group of researchers, health system administrators, education specialists, and patient representatives will meet regularly to select, measure, and report implementation and outcome indicators that are meaningful to a Northern Ontario health system. In the first study, we will coach implementation science teams to use data from local health organizations, provincial administrative databases and research surveys, and document analysis to populate the indicators. Our research team will leverage their connections with national and international leaders in northern, rural, and remote health and education research to host two consensus-building workshops to refine and validate learning health system outcomes as part of Study 2. To accomplish these goals, we will hire a research coordinator and PhD student to facilitate project meetings, data collection and analysis, and reporting writing. This project is important because it addresses the gap in research literature about the impacts of a learning health system model. For the mental health program, community hospital, and integrated health system in Northern Ontario that are the focus of this research, these findings will help inform how to spread, scale, or change their current approaches to better improve health and health care.