Once our PSI Knowledge Translation (KT) Fellows take off from the starting line, they make strides as they move their knowledge translation activities and research program forward. As the finish line becomes clearer in their sight, we asked our fellows some questions to share their progress thus far, and what they look forward to in the remainder of their KT Fellowship.

What are some of your accomplishments from the KT Fellowship thus far?

Publications

Since the outset of the project, I have authored/co-authored the following publications:

April 2024:

Implementation, Clinical Benefit and Safety of a D-Dimer-Focused Pulmonary Embolism Testing Pathway in the Emergency Department

Federico Germini, Fayad Al-Haimus, Yang Hu, Shawn Mondoux, Quazi Ibrahim, Noel Chan, Rick Ikesaka, Joshua Klyn, Natasha Clayton, Lehana Thabane, Kerstin de Wit

Annals of Emergency Medicine

January 2024:

The inseparability of context and clinical reasoning

Andrew Olson, Juliane E Kämmer, Ahmed Taher, Robert Johnston, Qian Yang, Shawn Mondoux, Sandra Monteiro

Journal of evaluation in clinical practice

Validating the Emergency Department Avoidability Classification (EDAC): A cluster randomized single-blinded agreement study

Ryan P Strum, Shawn Mondoux, Fabrice I Mowbray, Lauren E Griffith, Andrew Worster, Walter Tavares, Paul Miller, Komal Aryal, Ravi Sivakumaran, Andrew P Costa

PLoS One

December 2023:

GridlockED as an Intervention for Nurses (GAAIN) Study

Teresa M Chan, Nicole Bodnariuc, Nandini Nandeesha, Jennifer Kodis, Clare O’Connor, Shawn Mondoux, Alim Pardhan, Ruth Chen

The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing

Health care utilization and outcomes of patients seen by virtual urgent care versus in-person emergency department care

SL McLeod, JE Tarride, S Mondoux, JM Paterson, L Plumptre, …

CMAJ

Development of a machine learning-based acuity score prediction model for virtual care settings

Justin N Hall, Ron Galaev, Marina Gavrilov, Shawn Mondoux

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

November 2023:

Was virtual care as safe as in-person care? Analyzing patient outcomes at 7- and 30-days in Ontario during the SaRS-CoV-2 pandemic

Shawn Mondoux, Frank Battaglia, Anastasia Gayowsky, Natasha Clayton, Caillin Langmann, Paul Miller, Alim Pardhan, Julie Mathews, Alex Drossos and Keerat Grewal

Healthcare Quarterly, Longwoods

September 2023:

“It saved me from the emergency department”: A qualitative study of patient experience of virtual urgent care in Ontario

Katie N Dainty, M Bianca Seaton, Justin N Hall, Shawn Mondoux, Lency Abraham, Joy McCarron, Jean-Eric Tarride, Shelley L McLeod

PLoS One

Quantifying the escalating impact of paramedic transported emergency department visits for opioid-related conditions in Ontario, Canada: A population-based cohort study

Ryan P Strum, Shawn Mondoux, Fabrice I Mowbray, Paul Miller, Andrew Worster, Richard Ferron, Andrew P Costa

PLoS One

May 2023:

Storage conditions, sample integrity, interferences, and a decision tool for investigating unusual high-sensitivity cardiac troponin results

Matthew A Lafrenière, Vikas Tandon, Craig Ainsworth, Kazem Nouri, Shawn E Mondoux, Andrew Worster, Peter A Kavsak

Clinical Biochemistry

April 2023:

Digging into the complex problem of mental health presentations to pediatric emergency departments: a how-to guide

Shawn Mondoux, April Kam

Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine

The COVID-19 impact and characterization on substance use-related emergency department visits for adolescents and young adults in Canada: Practical implications

Soyeon Kim, Natalie Rajack, Shawn E Mondoux, Vitor S Tardelli, Nathan J Kolla, Bernard Le Foll Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice

Identifying very-low-risk patients for future myocardial infarction or death Peter A Kavsak, Joshua O Cerasuolo, Mark K Hewitt, Shawn E Mondoux, Richard Perez, Hsien Seow, Craig Ainsworth, Jinhui Ma, Andrew Worster, Dennis T Ko

Canadian Journal of Cardiology

March 2023:

Evaluating emergency department transfers from urgent care centres: insights for paramedic integration with subacute healthcare

Ryan P Strum, Fabrice I Mowbray, Shawn E Mondoux, Andrew P Costa

BMJ Open Quality

January 2023:

Demographic characteristics, outcomes and experience of patients using virtual urgent care services from 14 emergency department led sites in Ontario

Shelley L McLeod, Shawn Mondoux, Justin N Hall, Katie Dainty, Joy McCarron, Jean-Eric Tarride, Lency Abraham, Sandy Tse, Rodrick Lim, Megan Fitzgibbon, Renee-Anne Montpellier, Leon Rivlin, Carla Rodriguez, Lisa Beck, Lianne McLean, Daniel Rosenfield, Shaun Mehta, Michelle Welsford, Cameron Thompson, Howard Ovens

Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine

Media impact of research

December 2023

More Canadians have been using virtual care since the pandemic. Is it effective and safe? https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/new-canadian-research-suggests-virtual-care-is-effective-and-safe-1.6676  733 . Dec 7th 2023.

November 2023

McMaster study finds that virtual care is safe, being used effectively https://www.chch.com/mcmaster-study-finds-that-virtual-care-is-safe-being-used-effectively/ , Nov 27th 2023.

Medical care being delivered by phone and video is safe, concludes McMaster research

The Hamilton Spectator, Nov 27th 2023.

Prognostiq Health (previously Llif Healthcare)

As part of a larger and more concerted KT effort, and in line with the thesis put forward as part of my application for the fellowship, I have founded a company who is engaged in physician audit and feedback. The principle is to use EMR data to provide high-value feedback to clinicians with the goal of better situational awareness, improve patient care and decrease health system cost. In this way, we are engaging in the pragmatic act proposed in our application for research.

Current metrics:

• Reporting monthly emergency department practice data to over 100 MDs.
• Data holding in excess of 900,000 ED visits
• Current yearly ARR of $40,000 CAD
• Generated $380,000 CAD in seed-stage company revenue
• Over $250,000 CAD in non-dilutive business funding
• 5 employees

Newsworthy milestones:

• Prognostiq Health graduates as an alumnus from Canada’s most prestigious business incubator. We completed final selection for Creative Destruction Lab – Vancouver, Biomedical Engineering Stream in May 2024.
• Prognostiq Health is featured as a venture in the Halo Health Live 23 session. Halo Health is Canada’s only physician angel investment group, selecting among hundreds of ventures per year to find the most promising in the healthcare space.
• Prognostiq Health is selected as a feature vendor for the Digital Health Expo stage as part of the MaRS Impact Health 2024 conference. This conference features Canada’s most promosign and emergency health tech solutions.
• Prognostiq Health featured as a Beta startup company at Collision Conference 2024 in Toronto.
• Prognostiq Health selected as part of the 2024 cohort for the Canadian Entrepreneurs in Life Sciences Valley Ready (CELS-VR) program. This exposes Canadian companies to the tech ecosystem in Silicon Valley, enabling investment and market penetration.

Pending contracts – Prognostiq is poised to expand its implementation by integrating in the following health facilities:

• Newfoundland and Labrador Health Service
• Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center
• Queensway Carleton Hospital
• Royal Columbian Hospital – BC

Current impact:

• Early data from interventions has demonstrated:
  • a 10% increase in the number of patients seen per hour in participating emergency departments.
  • a 5% decrease in 72hr return rates in participating emergency departments

Media features:

• December 2022
  • IMPROVING IN-HOSPITAL PATIENT CARE USING DATA ANALYTICS
  • https://perspective.ca/improving-healthcare-st-josephs-hamilton/
• November 2022
  • McMaster Seed Fund invests $1.27 million in three startup companies
  • https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/mcmaster-seed-fund-invests-1-27-million-in- three-startup-companies/

Please describe any challenges/barriers that you have encountered thus far and what actions were/will be taken to resolve them?

Research objectives:

• Drafting of subsequent articles is ongoing. Submission to follow
• No active issues at present.

Business objectives:

• Market penetration in healthcare takes a very long time

What are some items/deliverables that you look forward to coming to fruition in the remainder of your KT Fellowship?

A research trial with a US health center willing to pilot and try our technology. This will yield MD-centric and system centric endpoints which are likely to make us vastly more scalable in the US marketplace.

Within Canada, we look forward to integrations across multiple new sites.

What are some things that surprised you during your fellowship thus far?

That the opportunity to have impact has presented itself both in the form of research but also in the form of direct-to-MD solutions that are changing the face of healthcare delivery in participating centers.