A rapid increase in the amount of health care data being generated and collected, coupled with advancements in data-analysis methods and technologies, is transforming healthcare. Artificial intelligence (AI) and related decision-support tools show remarkable potential for using data to empower quality improvement and tailoring of programs and services to meet client and community needs.
This one-page infographic is a companion to the report, Towards a Learning Health System: Better Care Tomorrow When We Learn from Today. It provides an overview of what a learning health system is and why it's important; elements of the Alliance's Learning Health System; an example of the full learning cycle in practice; and ways to participate.
The Alliance for Healthier Communities and its member organizations have long been committed to continuous learning and evidence-informed practice. Until now, the work to support this commitment has been weighted towards data collection and technical infrastructure building. These elements are important foundations for the Learning Health System, but in themselves, they are not sufficient to complete the cycle of learning. Combining this foundation with new processes of learning and improvement will result in a complete system, a Learning Health System.
Canada’s health care systems do not routinely collect self-reported race and Indigenous identity data and often lack a standardized and consistent approach to data collection that would permit comparisons between organizations or jurisdictions.