Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

To address critical gaps in the mental health and healthcare service delivery, a highly innovative and interdisciplinary group of academics formed the VITAL (Virtual Interactive Tools for Advanced Living) team. Together they have developed an AI (artificial intelligence) - driven Virtual Care Navigator (VCN) that can make personalized service recommendations for individuals based on their needs. Ultimately, the VCN platform will help increase the efficiency of the health system by reducing wait times and increasing the accuracy of service recommendations. Here we have proposed three outreach activities to engage both citizens and service providers in Northern Ontario to disseminate information about the VCN platform. Through these activities we will also have tablets to demo the platform, and receive feedback on its functionality and ease of use. In the first objective, members of the VITAL team will travel to small communities in Northeastern Ontario to visit service providers, removing any barriers associated with travel for the service providers. In the second objective, we will host a community event to present the VCN platform to members of the public. During this event, we will also demo the platform to engage their feedback on its accessibility and usability. In the third and final objective, we will rent a space in an accessible, high-traffic space (i.e. a local mall) to further engage the community and demo the platform. These activities will facilitate the dissemination of knowledge of our platform to its key stakeholders, service providers and members of the public. Engaging these stakeholders will be critical in ensuring the VCN platform is relevant and accessible.