Labelle Lectureship

Jay Shaw, an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, will give the 2021-22 Labelle Lecture – its 30th anniversary - on Wednesday, November 10 at 3 pm. His lecture is entitled "Will Innovation Save Health Care? Issues and Opportunities for Health Care as a Public Good."

Health systems globally face complex challenges in the organization and delivery of health care. The COVID-19 pandemic represents one obvious and extreme challenge for health systems, but prior to the pandemic a series of pre-existing social and economic trends were already straining the capacity of health systems to fulfill their goals. In response, many health systems have invested heavily in innovations in the domains of digital health and new models of care intended to enhance their capacity to meet peoples’ needs while containing overall costs.

In this presentation, Shaw poses the question: Is innovation achieving its aims?

He will examine five challenges to the possibility of health care innovation that genuinely serves diverse publics, including:

1. The role of technology corporations,
2. A tendency to over-invest in new technologies,
3. The digital divide,
4. The lack of attention to upstream determinants of health, and
5. Ignorance of infrastructural issues.

He will conclude with comments on responsible innovation as a potential approach to promoting the impact of innovation for inclusive health care as a public good.

Shaw is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at University of Toronto with cross-appointment to the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He serves as Research Director of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Ethics & Health at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, and is adjunct Scientist at the Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care. He practiced as a physical therapist in community-based care prior to completing his PhD in 2012.

His program of research addresses the implementation and ethical implications of innovations in health care, with a special focus on innovative models of community-focused integrated care, digital health technologies, and applications of AI in health care.

More information and a link to attend this virtual event will be posted closer to the event.