Vital near real-time health data for Trials, Artificial Intelligence, and a Learning Health System
VITAL is a new multi-provincial platform that is being built on the proven GEMINI infrastructure to enable near real-time data access to 160 hospitals that care for 20 million Canadians across Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec, for authorized research and innovation.
VITAL is funded by ~$110M in combined federal, provincial and institutional investment. It aims to improve healthcare, enhance patients’ access to cutting-edge treatments, and catalyze economic development. VITAL will support research and innovation in three broad areas that are best suited to harness hospital clinical data:
- Clinical trials: VITAL will digitize the patient recruitment and data collection process for trials, empowering them to be larger, faster, more generalizable and cost efficient.
- AI: VITAL’s network of hospitals will create “living laboratories” at scale so that AI technologies can be developed, implemented and evaluated in real-world settings – necessary steps on the path to adoption and commercialization.
- Observational research: VITAL will support real-world studies looking at dynamic health system issues such as optimizing critical care and trauma capacity and infectious outbreak surveillance to improve healthcare deliver and enhance Canada's security.
VITAL respects provincial governance while enabling data access across jurisdictions for research and innovation. As a sovereign health data infrastructure, VITAL ensures the secure and responsible use of high-quality hospital data to drive a robust life sciences sector and economic development. It also enables larger, more diverse, and more equitable data coverage, helping ensure people across the country benefit from innovation while providing the scale and diversity of data needed for advanced discovery.
Co-Leads
Fahad Razak (Unity Health Toronto)
Amol Verma (Unity Health Toronto)
Collaborating Institutions
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
- The Hospital for Sick Children
- McGill University and McGill University Health Centre
- Sinai Health
- Sunnybrook Health Sciences
- Université de Montréal
- Université Laval
- University Health Network
- University of Alberta
- University of Calgary
- University of Ottawa
- University of Toronto
- Well Living House (Unity Health Toronto)
Funding
$30M from Government of Canada's Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED)
$24.6M from Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)