Gotcare and Quinte Health will leverage digital health tools to close healthcare gaps in rural Ontario through in-home care powered by AI technology.

This initiative will allow Hastings residents to access healthcare in their own homes.

Toronto-based Gotcare is a national health technology start-up developing health services for the home. It has partnered with Quinte Health and the Reach Alliance at the University of Toronto to launch the AI-enabled Health Ambassador care platform in the Hastings region.

Digital, Canada’s innovation cluster for digital technologies, is providing co-investment of $1.5m to support the total $3.1m initiative. The organisations say they are working together to ensure no resident gets left behind.

Gotcare plans to bring its AI-enabled triage and health monitoring tools into residents’ homes, starting in north Hastings. Eligible residents will be matched with a health ambassador, an upskilled community care provider with digital health skills, who collaborates with virtual clinicians to deliver as much care as possible in the home setting.

The Health Ambassador care platform will bridge gaps in home care and primary care for residents who do not have a family doctor, and for patients who require an alternative level of care (ALC), rather than keeping them in the hospital. Across Canada, approximately 15% of acute-level care beds in hospitals are filled by ALC patients due to a lack of structural support for care within their own homes.

The organisations are working together to decrease the Hastings region’s longer than usual wait times for primary care and home care, due to a lack of workers in these fields. This is unfortunately common for rural regions, as only eight per cent of doctors in Ontario work outside of urban centres.

“How residents are doing in the home has been a black box for clinicians, health organisations and care funders,” said Gotcare CEO Chenny Xia. “Historically, this makes timely, cost-saving interventions tricky. I am confident we will provide data-driven insights to help set a new standard for technology-enabled rural care.”

Gotcare health ambassadors will work closely with Quinte Health staff and in collaboration with community health providers with the Hastings Prince Edward Ontario Health team to monitor residents at home to spot health issues early and take action before critical care is required, especially for those who do not have a family doctor.

“One of Quinte Health’s core values is, ‘imagine it’s you’,” said Gina Johar, vice president at Quinte Health. “But with strained health care staffing, it can be difficult to ensure patients are getting the right care in the right place. By partnering with Gotcare, we can offer more support and early interventions to our patients, all from the comfort of their own home.”

Nadia Shaikh-Naeem, vice president at Digital (digitalsupercluster.ca), added: “Digital is excited to build upon the over five years of investments we’ve made in applied AI with this latest announcement. Led by Gotcare, this consortium is helping build a more efficient, supported system of connection and access to care. We’re proud to co-invest alongside innovators like Gotcare and support partnerships such as these that are building on Canada’s global reputation in AI and bringing better care to more Canadians.”

The Reach Alliance at the University of Toronto will uncover actionable insights about this healthcare model between Gotcare and Quinte Health. It will look at how it affects stakeholders, including patients and clinicians, as well as how home-based and early interventions create possible cost savings for the healthcare system. The Reach Alliance can then make policy recommendations based on their real-time learnings from this partnership.

“Innovations addressing urgent public health challenges faced by last-mile populations are a main research focus of the Reach Alliance,” said Marin MacLeod, executive director of the Reach Alliance (reachalliance.org). “We’re excited to partner with Gotcare and Quinte Health to better understand how innovative health care interventions can lead to improved health outcomes for geographically remote populations in Ontario.”

Gotcare (gotcare.ca) has been working on bringing healthcare to rural Canada for years. With rural hospitals often 25km or more away from residents, the company has employed its health ambassadors across rural Canada to make healthcare more accessible.

Quinte Health (quintehealth.ca) is a family of four hospitals – Belleville General Hospital, North Hastings Hospital, Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital and Trenton Memorial Hospital – that employ 2600 staff. Physicians provide care through four emergency departments, operating rooms at three hospitals, a rehabilitation day hospital, ambulatory care clinics, and a range of diagnostic services. There are more than 335 inpatient beds for acute medical patients, intensive care, obstetrics, paediatrics, mental health, complex continuing care, rehabilitation and surgery.