Can AI Fix ER Wait Times?

Canada’s national AI strategy puts healthcare on centre stage – and for good reason. If you ask Canadians about the healthcare system, many will say they value it deeply, but that they are frustrated by wait times. In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse looks at what we need to do to make artificial intelligence move the needle for wait times and quality of care.

Mara Lederman, co-founder and COO of Signal 1, explains the pressure inside hospitals: rising demand, constrained supply, long waits, and digital systems that often record care without helping the system move faster. She points to practical AI uses already emerging, including AI agents that call patients before procedures, reduce cancelled appointments and protect scarce clinical capacity.

Dr. Amol Verma and Dr. Fahad Razak of Unity Health Toronto take the conversation to the national level. Their work on VITAL – a health data platform – is aimed at connecting more than 160 hospitals across Canada. The promise is larger than one AI tool: better clinical trials, safer AI validation, more Canadian data, stronger governance and a healthcare system that can learn in near-real time.

Canada’s healthcare system generates enormous amounts of data every day. Every hospital admission can produce hundreds of thousands – even millions – of data points, from lab tests and imaging to digital vital signs and outcomes. But too much of that data remains trapped inside hospitals, provinces and systems that were not built to learn from one another.

The episode asks: if Canada has a public healthcare system, world-class research talent and hospitals generating hundreds of thousands of data points for every admitted patient, can AI finally help make the system work better for patients?

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