Community Leader Spotlight: Diane Gutiw, InfoCentral Health Analytics

Stepping into the Spotlight

Dr. Diane Gutiw is Vice President of Analytics at CGI and was a founding co-chair of the Health Analytics community on InfoCentral. She has recently stepped back from her duties as co-chair, but remains an active member of this vibrant community. Previously, she served as co-lead of InfoCentral’s Coordination of Care community.

Dr. Gutiw supports Canadian clients related to advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and intelligent automation, as well as conducting analytics program evaluations. With more than 25 years of experience in the design, development and delivery of big data solutions, she has served as solution architect for highly integrated solutions across numerous industries including finance, healthcare and education. The last ten years of her career have been focused on data science engagements related to predictive modeling for revenue optimization, geospatial modeling for crime reduction, prescriptive analyses for fentanyl crises management, hospital readmission modeling as well as analytic architecture and data governance strategies.

Dr. Gutiw holds an MBA in Digital Technologies and a PhD in IT Management, where she conducted doctoral research on medical expert system modeling and adoption. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University and has published and delivered white papers on the effectiveness and return on investment of data driven decision making.

Infoway connected with Dr. Gutiw to thank her for her years of service to the InfoCentral communities and to learn more about her thoughts on the impact these communities have had on digital health innovation in Canada.

Why do you believe in digital health?

I have worked on health technology information implementations in five provinces, as well as two cross-jurisdiction public health initiatives. I am immensely proud of the progress we have made as a country! From the earliest HL7 implementations in the late 1990s, the positive impact of integrated health solutions on patients became evident. The fastest and most impressive impact I observed was the digitization and integration of diagnostic imaging in Saskatchewan, with the first implementation taking place in Swift Current. The ability to diagnose and treat patients at home through remote analysis of images was remarkable, as the cost and disruptiveness of expensive patient transfers to larger centres was reduced dramatically. This resulted in a fast ROI for the province and, more importantly, a patient experience that was more effective and closer to home.

Why should people care about the Health Analytics community?

We believe that the Health Analytics community is the result of decades of investment in centralized and integrated health information systems. Canada is at a major advantage when it comes to efficiently matching and linking health information across multiple jurisdictions, and leveraging data as an asset for health organization operations, health provider care provision and patient longitudinal record analysis. The benefits for research and care journey analysis is also benefitting from investing in our data. The Health Analytics community has been developed to share experiences in leveraging data for advanced analytics, both technically and from a business view across jurisdictions, and has had great success in connecting providers, implementers and vendors all working on solutions to enable analytics.

How do members of the Health Analytics community participate and make a difference to digital health in Canada?

Our community shares relevant information and facilitates communication with stakeholders through our monthly meetings and community forum, along with presentations hosted by professionals representing an array of jurisdictions and business sectors. For example, Phil Slater recently presented on the need and implementation of metadata and Master Data Management using practical examples and discussed how to stop a data lake from turning into a swamp.

What are the long-term goals of the Health Analytics community?

We want it to remain relevant to its membership. Some of the ways we aim to achieve this is by ensuring that topics presented are useful and relevant. Additionally, we want to collaborate as a community to produce resources that will be of use to our members.

What are the 2019-20 goals for the community?

One of our goals for this year is to continue raising awareness about the Health Analytics community, as it is still relatively new. Another goal is to get more familiar with our members so we can leverage their experience and understand what their interests are, which will enable us to present content that is beneficial to them in their work streams. We have recently completed a survey of our membership and we are in the process of reviewing the results.

Can you share a fun fact about you?

I live on Saltspring Island in the B.C. Gulf Islands and have four kids, two horses, three goats and eight chickens. I take a ferry or floatplane to work most days.

Contact Diane Gutiw