Demystifying the Role and Extent of e-Technology in the Management of Patients with Complex Care Needs



Carolyn Steele Gray, in interview with Ross Upshur, discusses how her academic journey shaped her perspectives in understanding patient needs, health policy, organization and provider level issues and how to use that understanding to deliver a better care. The latter, she adds, necessitates a realistic approach of how to harness e-health technologies to deliver care, especially to patients with complex care needs.

Carolyn discusses how technology in health is not the silver bullet to healthcare questions and its implementation is embedded within complex social layers, affected by people’s feelings about it; policy issues surrounding it; and how organizations treat it. Carolyn describes the value of adopting a user-centred design evaluation approach used to develop the ePRO tool; describing how it evolved from a tool intended to collect patient-reported outcome measures to one that enables patient-centred goal-oriented care within primary care settings. The talk addresses some of the current challenges in the use of e-health technologies in the healthcare system highlighting tensions faced by researchers and adopters.
Carolyn is a Scientist at the Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (University of Toronto), as well as an investigator with the Health System Performance Research Network (University of Toronto).
Carolyn’s research focuses on the role of health information technology in supporting person-centred care delivery for individuals with complex care needs. Her research explores how technology can be leveraged to enable implementation and sustainability of innovative models of care as a means to support health system transformation.
Carolyn received her PhD in Health Policy from the University of Toronto (2013), and a Master’s in Public Policy and Administration from Ryerson University (2008). Prior to her current role as a Scientist, she was a postdoctoral fellow working at the University of Toronto and the Health System Performance Research Network. For a full bio, please follow this link.

Carolyn has published work in the areas of eHealth and mHealth, organizational change, health policy and patient-centred care delivery.

Some of Carolyn’s papers indexed in PubMed so far.