Project start date: January 2023
Project status: Midway
Project sponsor: University of Alberta 

Virtual Care has become an integral part of health service in Canada since the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a recognized potential for virtual care services to both alleviate or exacerbate health inequities. As such, a constructive effort must be made to design and manage virtual care services in a manner that promotes health equity.  

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The World Health Organization defines equity as the “absence of unfair, avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically or by other dimensions of inequality”.  Equity in health care is recognized as one of six parameters of quality care as defined by the National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine),  the other five being safe, efficient, effective, timely and person-centric care. To deliver quality care, which is the ultimate purpose and accountability of all health service, equity must be promoted in concert with other domains of quality, rather than in isolation.

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In cooperation with Women’s College Hospital (WCH) Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WIHV), the AVCCB is developing a digital health equity framework that can be applied to the design and deployment of virtual care solutions in Alberta.