My Father’s Final Weeks Revealed Why Canadian Healthcare Needs AI

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From the original article

During my father’s cancer treatment, I spent months taking him to chemotherapy, radiation, and medical appointments whenever I could return to Canada from overseas.

Doctors gave verbal instructions to a man with dementia. Those instructions would be forgotten. Written explanations were rarely provided during the encounters I attended, and we were not given a consistent, usable way to follow his care.

He underwent tests for lung cancer and other conditions, yet the results were not routinely placed in our hands. Finding the information and ensuring the next person had it became another responsibility for a family already dealing with serious illness.

At one hospital in Longueuil, Quebec, I was handed a folder of his medical documents to carry from one doctor to another on a different floor.

Patients and families were expected to connect the pieces precisely when they were least equipped to do so.

Canada has an opportunity to change this. It could build healthcare around a continuous, accessible patient record, supported by AI that helps patients, families, and professionals act on the information it contains. If we can demonstrate that this improves care at home, we could also create an important Canadian export.

It would be inaccurate to say Quebec has no digital health infrastructure.

The Dossier santé Québec, or DSQ, allows authorized professionals to access shared health information. It shares laboratory results, medical imaging results, and certain medication information. But Quebec’s own explanation explains that only some information from local records is automatically shared. The provincial record is not necessarily a complete account of a patient’s care.

Quebec is also modernizing. Santé Québec describes its Dossier santé numérique and associated patient service, Mon dossier santé, as bringing together information, results, appointments, and communication. Santé Québec currently lists the Dossier santé numérique as a pilot in the Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal and Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec regions, where Mon dossier santé is also offered.

A family should not have to know which database contains a result. Relevant information should reach the authorized people responsible for care, wherever that care happens.

During my father’s treatment, teams in different hospitals repeatedly appeared unaware of one another’s work. I could not tell whether information was missing, inaccessible, incompatible, or simply unread.

From the patient’s perspective, the result was the same: continuity depended on someone manually reconstructing it.

Estonia offers a useful reference. Its national health information system has operated since 2008, enabling providers to exchange information across institutions. Through its Health Portal, patients can review submitted medical documents, prescriptions, and referrals, designate representatives, and check who has accessed their information. Digital identification provides a secure means of access.

Estonia has not solved every clinical problem. But it demonstrates a principle Canada should treat as basic infrastructure: care should remain connected across providers.

When is the next appointment? Where is it? What preparation is required? What changed at the last consultation? Has a referral been accepted? Who is responsible for following up?

With my father’s permission, or the appropriate authority to act on his behalf, I should have been able to ask those questions from overseas and receive answers drawn from his current care plan.

Such an assistant should retrieve authorized records as needed, identify the source and date of its answers, and acknowledge missing or conflicting information.

It could send reminders by text, email, or voice call, notify an authorized caregiver when an appointment remains unconfirmed, and help reschedule before a slot is lost.

After consultations, it could help prepare plain-language summaries for clinical review and share them with the patient and authorized family. Printed copies, telephone support, and caregiver access would remain essential. The system must adapt to the patient’s abilities.

In my father’s case, appointments were missed. A process that relies on someone remembering instructions must account for whether that person can reliably remember them.

A Cochrane review of eight randomized trials published through August 2012 found moderate-quality evidence that text reminders improved attendance compared with no reminders. AI would need to demonstrate additional value through conversation, coordination, and caregiver follow-up.

For illustration, suppose a service schedules one million appointments annually. If an intervention reduces missed appointments from 10% to 7%, that represents 30,000 additional attended appointments. At an assumed recoverable capacity value of C$150 each, the benefit would be C$4.5 million annually before implementation and operating costs.

These are hypothetical inputs, not measured Canadian savings. Recovered capacity may mean more patients treated or shorter waits rather than money returned to the treasury.

Hospitals could similarly measure time saved locating records and clarifying requests, accounting for implementation, errors, and oversight.

When I returned after receiving the call in late September that my father was terminally ill and in hospital, the failures became more intimate.

He shared a room with another seriously ill patient. This patient was frequently distressed and shouted throughout the day. From what I witnessed, he struggled to understand his condition and what was happening around him.

Nurses tried to explain. Their time was limited, and other patients needed them.

My father also asked questions repeatedly. An answer could soothe him, but only briefly before the question returned.

There was another detail that seemed remarkably ordinary to everyone around us: the call button.

A patient pressed it, a light appeared outside the room, and an audible alert sounded at the other end. I watched staff enter and ask which patient had called. They then had to find out why, and sometimes leave to locate the appropriate colleague or equipment.

A better system could identify the bed immediately and allow the patient to communicate a need through speech or simple choices: help getting to the washroom, discomfort, a question, or urgent assistance.

Where appropriate, AI could turn a spoken request into a concise message for staff.