Digital Health

Innovative Solutions to Help Patients Manage Complex Health Conditions

CANet has created a secure interactive digital health platform to address the critical needs of patients.

We continue to implement digital health strategies through cardiac clinical research, enhancing our innovative digital health solutions to assist health care professionals, help caregivers, and offer patients on-demand tools to manage their complex health conditions.

VIRTUES®

Secure Interactive Digital Health Platform

Working collaboratively combining patients’ and physicians’ vision and design ideas we built ‘VIRTUES — Virtual Integrated Reliable Transformative User-Driven E-health System.’

VIRTUES infrastructure includes:

  • a secure and compliant patient-controlled cloud-based platform.
  • an electronic database that hosts current and past personal health data which is assembled, integrated, and interpreted for patients and their caregivers.
  • proprietary care sets that integrate with the platform.

Central to the VIRTUES platform are the:

  1. combining of data from various sources;
  2. secure collection of ongoing and real-time data; and,
  3. integration of data in a meaningful manner for patients, their caregivers, and healthcare providers.

VIRTUES provides patients the ultimate ownership of their data allowing them to:

  • share their needs;
  • obtain personalized education relating to their arrhythmia condition and its consequences; and,
  • participate in the management of their health condition.

This is accomplished in a virtual space, in the comfort of their home within their community.

Patient Partners Enhance Effect and Utility

As VIRTUES is implemented in various regions, patients (co-designers of the platform and application) are assembled and consulted to maximize its effect and utility in those locations.

Every VIRTUES-related study includes a patient working group to ensure that the platform, applications, and related education materials will be designed appropriately for the unique needs of that population.

  • patient partners continually help enhance how the platform delivers educational material, evaluates data, and explains patient outcomes.
  • lessons learned from fostering patient engagement in arrhythmia virtual care can be applied to other disease areas.

Privacy and Security

VIRTUES is compliant with all Canadian healthcare privacy laws.

  • platform infrastructure maintains Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) compliance with data-at-rest and in-transit encryption, firewall services, data backup services, and data replication to a second site for disaster recovery capabilities.
  • service delivery infrastructure is located within a tier 3 data centre maintaining all standard security and operational certifications.

Privacy impact reviews and research ethics board approvals have been completed in the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec

ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, and SOC II Certified

VIRTUES maintains ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, and SOC II certifications and federal government security clearance level of “Secret” for data sets that require that level of protection.

The infrastructure is hosted by ThinkON, a Canadian organization with established security practices that have been reviewed by both ISO and SOC II auditors.

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)

VIRTUES is also unique in comparison to other virtual health care models.

The digital health platform is built using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards describing data formats and elements for exchanging electronic health records in hospital systems.

The standard was created by the Health Level Seven (HL7) International healthcare standards organization.

Technology In Use

To date, over 1,400 patients have used/continue to use the VIRTUES digital health platform.

Media

Virtual Care Ecosystem

Utilizing data from thousands of patients, VIRTUES serves as an essential research and knowledge translation strategy to advance healthcare technology.

Access to VIRTUES data encourages high-quality research that aims to improve critical outcomes of patient care.

Patient-Driven Cardiac Care

By collecting, integrating, and analyzing data, VIRTUES has the capability to deliver personalized education material for each patient’s specific medical condition, tailored to the patient’s requirements and educational profile.

With VIRTUES, specific requirements such as language preference and family caregiver’s accessibility will help refine improved care planning tools and care pathways for patient care at home.

  • VIRTUES provides virtual care to patients.
  • VIRTUES delivers healthcare to patients at home, in their communities.
  • VIRTUES is designed by patients for patients.
  • VIRTUES improves quality and accessibility of care at reduced cost.
  • VIRTUES is an innovative Canadian solution to a global crisis.

VIRTUES COVID-19

Streamlining the patient assessment process making it faster to identify high-risk patients and understand their needs.

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VIRTUES CIED

Supporting patients with Cardiac Implantable Electronic Devices (CIED) remotely.

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VIRTUES AF

A model of care that integrates patient health data with accumulating clinical and digital data providing guideline informed interventions and personalized education targeted to the needs of patients with atrial fibrillation.

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VIRTUES POST-MI

Providing patients with post-myocardial infarction virtual care by receiving cardiac rehabilitation, guideline informed interventions, goal setting and personalized education.

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