Opening Ceremonies + Opening Keynote Panel
- When: 8:00 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. on Monday, June 2
- Where: Harbour Castle Westin Frontenac Ballroom + Metropolitan Ballroom
Opening Ceremonies
Kick-start your e-Health25 experience here! Meet up with old friends or find yourself sitting beside someone new and make a connection. The Opening Ceremonies set the tone for two days of learning, positive energy, networking, and commitment to digital health.
Opening Keynote Panel: Health Data Governance, Security and Privacy, and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare/Medicine
This expert panel of thought leaders will discuss health data governance and the transformative role of artificial intelligence in advancing healthcare and public health outcomes. They will share valuable insights into the possibilities, challenges, and responsibilities surrounding patient health data governance and artificial intelligence in the health sector.
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Opening Ceremonies
Opening Ceremonies sponsored by Oracle Health
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Knowledge Keeper
Gimaa R. Stacey Laforme, Knowledge Keeper, Author, Poet and Storyteller, Retired Chief Of The Mississaugas of The New Credit First Nation
Gimaa R. Stacey Laforme, a thought leader, celebrated poet, honorary senior fellow Massey college and advocate, resides on the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation with his wife and five children. Overcoming a challenging early life, he began working at age 12 and built a diverse career in trades, administration, and education.
Laforme served as Chief of MCFN from 2015 to 2023, fostering partnerships with governments, institutions, and businesses while promoting Indigenous rights and reconciliation. He has met with prominent figures, including King Charles III, to elevate Indigenous voices.
A best-selling author of Living in the Tall Grass and Love Life Loss and a Little Bit of Hope, his poetry champions identity, culture, and social justice. Post-retirement, he remains active in cultural advocacy and consulting, serving as Strategic Advisor for the Hillcore Group and supporting the Erika Foundation. Honored with awards like the 2024 Friend of the Greenbelt, he continues to inspire with his vision for a more inclusive world.
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Opening Ceremonies Emcee
Cassie Frazer, Founding Principal | Past President, Reliance Healthcare Consulting | Digital Health Canada
Cassie Frazer is an accomplished healthcare executive and the Past President of Digital Health Canada. With over 25 years of experience, she has held senior leadership roles in hospital care, community health, and national digital health initiatives.. As a certified health informatics professional, Cassie is passionate about innovation, transformation, and bridging healthcare through digital solutions. Currently, she leads Reliance Healthcare Consulting., where she empowers organizations by connecting the dots between ideas, strategies, and stakeholders to drive meaningful and lasting change.
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Opening Ceremonies Emcee
Alifa Khan, Patient Partner, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital
Alifa Khan is a second-generation settler who identifies with the pronouns she/her/hers. She worked in healthcare for 22 years in inpatient and non-patient-facing settings. Khan is the mother of three children, two of whom have neurodevelopmental differences and one with a congenital heart defect. She passionately partners in the health and educational systems at the micro, meso, and macro levels to deepen capacity and foster ripples of transformation, training the next generation of change agents in healthcare.
Presently, her most notable roles include being the Vice Chair of Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital (HBKRH) – Research Family Engagement Committee (RFEC), a member of Family as Faculty (FaF) at HBKRH, an Acceptance Commitment Training Facilitator for Caregivers of People with Disabilities, a Patient Surveyor at Accreditation Canada, a Peer Reviewer at Health Standards Organization (HSO), a member of her local Ontario Health Team (OHT), and a member of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Anti-Racism (IDEAA) Task Force at HBKRH.
Through genuine and meaningful collaborations, Alifa has successfully partnered and led initiatives that drive high-quality, safe care and transformational education for clients, families, students, clinicians, and health care providers. She won the 2020 Canadian Patient Safety Week Safety Story for “Understanding Virtual Care: A Resource for Clients and Families” and in 2019, she was the recipient of both an Ontario Volunteer Service Award and The Beryl Institute – Team Innovation Award. In 2023, as part of a collaboratively led Student-Led Environment for Virtual Autism Supports during wait Times (SLED-VAST), her team won the Ministry of Colleges and Universities’ 2021/22 Minister’s Award of Excellence in the category of Future-Proofing Ontario’s students.
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Opening Keynote Panel
Opening Keynote Panel sponsored by Oracle Health
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Opening Keynote Moderator
Zayna Khayat, Applied Health Futurist and Adjunct Professor, Health Sector Strategy, University of Toronto
Zayna is adjunct faculty in the Health Sector Strategy stream at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Zayna is the in-house health futurist with Deloitte Canada’s Healthcare practice, and advises various health technology companies. Zayna previously led the Futures team with national home healthcare and aging social enterprise, SE Health, as their Future Strategist. Dr. Khayat was previously the lead of health system innovation at MaRS Discovery District, a health innovation hub in Toronto, Canada. In 2017 she was seconded to the REshape Innovation Centre at Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Zayna completed her Ph.D. in diabetes research from the University of Toronto (2001), followed by a career in strategy consulting, including as a Principal in the healthcare practice of The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). She currently resides in Toronto with her husband and three children and is proficient in French and Arabic languages.
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Opening Keynote Panellist
Dr. Ewan Affleck, Senior Medical Advisor – Health Informatics, College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta
Ewan Affleck has worked and lived in northern Canada since 1992. He is currently serving as the Senior Medical Advisor – Health Informatics, College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta, Strategic Advisor – Clinical and Informatics at the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and Chair of Networked Health, a collective focused on optimizing health data design and use. He is the past Chief Medical Information Officer of the Northwest Territories, was co-chair of the national Virtual Care Task Force, served on the Expert Working Group of the pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy, and is the Executive Producer and co-writer of The Unforgotten (2021), an award-winning film about inequities in health service for Indigenous people living in Canada. In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Canada for his contribution to northern health care.
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Opening Keynote Panellist
Maureen Kelly, Director, Data Stewardship Initiative, Canadian Institute of Health Information
Maureen Kelly is the Director of the Data Stewardship Initiative at the Canadian Institute for Health Information. She a strategic leader passionate about health data governance, data analytics and interoperability.
Maureen provides the vision and leadership for one of CIHI’s key strategic initiatives – to advance the development and implementation of Canada’s first Health Data Stewardship Framework, a foundational effort needed to safely unlock the power of our health data, while maintaining public trust and privacy.
Maureen has over 25 years of data and analytics experience and has held several leadership positions at CIHI leading national initiatives to improve how health data is managed, shared and used, including as inaugural director of CIHI’s data governance branch. Prior to joining CIHI in 2003, she worked at the Office for National Statistics in the U.K. and at Statistics Canada.
Ms. Kelly holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in social and political sciences from Cambridge University, England, and a postgraduate certification in applied statistics.
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Opening Keynote Panellist
Dr. Muhammad Mamdani, Vice President – Data Science and Advanced Analytics, Unity Health Toronto
Dr. Mamdani is Vice President of Data Science and Advanced Analytics at Unity Health Toronto and Director of the University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Education in Medicine (T-CAIREM). Dr. Mamdani’s team bridges advanced analytics including machine learning with clinical and management decision making to improve patient outcomes and hospital efficiency. Dr. Mamdani is also Professor in the Department of Medicine of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He is also an Affiliate Scientist at IC/ES and a Faculty Affiliate of the Vector Institute. In 2024, Dr. Mamdani’s team received the national Solventum Health Care Innovation Team Award by the Canadian College of Health Leaders. Previously, Dr. Mamdani was named among Canada’s Top 40 under 40. He has published over 500 studies in peer-reviewed medical journals. Dr. Mamdani obtained a Doctor of Pharmacy degree (PharmD) from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and completed a fellowship in pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research at the Detroit Medical Center. During his fellowship, Dr. Mamdani obtained a Master of Arts degree in Economics from Wayne State University with a concentration in econometric theory. He then completed a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University with a concentration in quantitative methods.
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Opening Keynote Panellist
Alies Maybee, Co-Chair, Patient Advisors Network (PAN)
Alies Maybee collaborates as a patient partner in many aspects of healthcare including on research projects and areas of service delivery and policy. Professionally, Alies has been a product manager designing large CRM systems servicing the financial services sector and has helped design an EMR clinical management system. She has been a co-chair for her local Ontario Health Team Digital Health Working Group and has been on Digital Health Advisory Committees in the Toronto region. She was privileged to be on the Expert Advisory Group for the Pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy initiative. Alies is a co-founder and co-chair of the Patient Advisors Network (PAN), a national community of patient/caregiver partners. She leads PAN’s team of patient/caregiver partners interested in technology and innovation projects many of whom collaborate on digital health evaluation projects for the Centre for Digital Health Evaluation at Women’s College Hospital. Alies looks for new ways to involve people from all backgrounds and communities which led to co-initiating EMPaCT, a community table of people with diverse lived experiences focused on health equity.
