Sex and Gender Working Group Leader Spotlight: Kelly Davison

Stepping into the Spotlight

Kelly Davison is a CNA-certified Registered Nurse (BC) that has practiced along the continuum of care in two provinces and has worked with our society’s most marginalized people – folks who live with concurrent disorders, people with chronic and difficult to treat primary mental illness, people with severe trauma and problematic substance use, and people who are homeless. In 2019, he graduated from the University of Victoria’s double degree MN/MSc (Health Informatics) program and the Health Terminology Standards program. In March 2020, he joined the Canada Health Infoway standards team. Kelly brings this wealth of experience to his leadership role in the Sex and Gender working group.

Infoway connected with Kelly about his role in the Sex and Gender Working Group and to learn more about the benefits and challenges of accurate documentation and representation of administrative and clinical sex and gender concepts in electronic patient records.

Why do you believe in digital health?

My practice as a Senior Standards Specialist at Canada Health Infoway is very personal. I recognize that my friends, my family, my teachers, my colleagues and my clients are all part of the same system that I work in, and work for. Like all nurses, I bear witness to the health challenges of individuals, families, communities and society, and work as one part of a large multi-sectoral community to redress them. It is my professional responsibility.

There is so much potential for technology to be used for good in our society, when it is thoughtfully designed. I believe that technology is a critical tool for creating health equity. I believe that health is a human right, and I believe in the principle of “one person, one record.” I believe that our fragmented health care system can be connected and unified. And as a nurse informatician, it is my professional responsibility to understand the conditions by which these things can be achieved and work toward them. They ought to be done – so let’s do it.

What are the Sex and Gender working group goals? Why are they important to you?

“To develop an implementation strategy to modernize sex and gender information practices in electronic health record (EHR) systems in Canada.” Modernizing sex and gender concepts in our system will help eliminate structural bias, invisibility of these populations in the data, will enable health equity through improvements in analytics and research, and will enable culturally competent and psychologically safe care through accurate documentation and representation of administrative and clinical sex and gender concepts.

How do members of the Sex and Gender working group participate and make a difference to digital health in Canada?

Monthly presentations lead to vigorous discussion about this topic. We learn about what is being done, what ought to be done, who is doing what, and what direction we should all take.

What are the long-term goals of the Sex and Gender working group

The long-term goals are to modernize sex and gender concepts in Canadian electronic health record (EHR) systems.

What are the 2020-21 goals for your group?

Complete some collaborative publications based on current states, and begin to specify, through extensive consultation, what modern representations of sex and gender concepts in EHRs are.

Tell us a fun fact about you

I love travelling the West Coast with my family. Portland, Seattle, Cannon Beach and San Francisco are some of our favourite places to visit. We are also thinking about getting a dog and are debating names. My vote: Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

Connect with Kelly Davison on InfoCentral or LinkedIn.