Innovation spotlight: A conversation with Dr. Ewan Affleck on resolving the digital health divide

Read time: 3 minutes

Supporting physicians and enhancing patient care with evidence and research

As the only medical regulator in Canada with a dedicated in-house Analytics, Innovation & Research (AIR) team, CPSA has a unique opportunity and responsibility to be a part of leading evidence-based health research that supports medical regulation and improves patient outcomes. CPSA’s AIR team collaborates with health researchers across Canada to develop and share this research on national and international levels.

One of the key members of the AIR team, Dr. Ewan Affleck, CPSA’s Health Informatics Senior Medical Advisor, is focused on research that addresses obstacles to physician performance arising from Canada’s digital health divide.

What is the digital health divide?

A high-functioning healthcare system must be able to exchange quality patient health data efficiently and safely between platforms and health providers. In Canada, there is currently no systematic approach to health data interoperability, resulting in fragmented data across various services, custodians, health authorities and jurisdictions. This impairs the performance of health providers including physicians.

Working towards resolving the digital health divide

Dr. Affleck represents CPSA on Networked Health-Alberta, a collective dedicated to improving the design and use of health data, which has proposed recommendations to address the digital health divide. Implementing these recommendations could significantly improve physician performance and patient outcomes.

Dr. Affleck’s work involves sharing these recommendations with policymakers, health organizations and other researchers. A notable instance of this knowledge translation was Dr. Affleck’s recent 2025 Douglas R. Wilson Lecture, Healing the System: How our Digital Health Divide is Making us Sick | Public Health, at the University of Alberta on Nov. 5, 2025.

We asked Dr. Affleck to share several key takeaways regarding his research and recommendations for resolving the digital health divide.

Q: What are the major impacts of fragmented health data systems on patient care?

A: Recently published research by CPSA indicates that fragmented health information has a very significant negative impact on patient care in three principal ways:

1. Firstly, if physicians and other health professionals do not have access to the information they need to make informed decisions about care, mistakes can be made and errors can occur that can adversely impact the health and wellbeing of patients.
2. Secondly, studies show that physicians who work in a fragmented health data environment can become very frustrated and burned out, and healthcare workers who are burned out tend to provide higher levels of unsafe care.
3. Thirdly, fragmented health data systems are highly inefficient and drive unnecessary cost. A recent study from Alberta-based health economists suggests that poorly designed and fragmented health data is costing Canada $9.4 billion a year, money that could be better used for patient care.

Q: What challenges do physicians face when health information is not seamlessly accessible?

A: There are two principal ways that fragmented (lack of interoperable) health data negatively impacts physicians and their performance.

1. Firstly, it wastes precious physician time. A recent study suggests that Canadian physicians lose 18.5 million hours a year to unnecessary administrative work, including seeking necessary patient information they cannot readily access. This is equivalent in time to 55.6 million patient visits annually.
2. Secondly, as stated in the previous answer, international studies over the last decade have found that physician burnout results from poorly configured and dysfunctional information technology, which in turn leads to increased levels of unsafe care and workforce attrition.

Q: What recommendations do you have for physicians, policymakers and technology partners to advance interoperability and support the transition to a more seamless patient care experience?

A: Much of the challenge with health data fragmentation is a result of outdated public policy.

My first recommendation is to understand that the current approach to health data contributes to the harm of patients and the health workforce, including physicians.

Alberta and Canada can look to other countries for examples of how to legislate health data interoperability, and we also need to evaluate current policy to balance the harm of ”under-sharing” health data with privacy harms that result from the ”oversharing of data.”