“Flying Blind”: Canada’s Supply Chain Infrastructure and the COVID-19 Pandemic

It is long overdue for Canada to create a comprehensive digital strategy that ensures data (e.g. population data, supply data, and workforce health data) is available in real time, within and across jurisdictions, to inform leadership decisions that are proactive, able to anticipate risks and implement preventive measures to ensure every Canadian and health worker has the protection needed to sustain health, wellness and quality of life.

A robust and transparent data infrastructure is a critical element Canada must achieve in order for health systems to respond to pandemic events proactively to protect the health of every Canadian which restores confidence in proactive and predictive pandemic management strategy well into the future.

Click here to read the article, published in Longwoods.

The article authors are Dr. Anne W Snowdon, BScN, MSc, PhD and Dr. Pierre-Gerlier Forest, PhD, FCAHS.

Dr. Anne Snowdon is the Scientific Director and CEO of SCAN Health, an International Knowledge Translation Platform (NCE-IKTP) that engages health system leaders and supply chain experts to advance global capacity to adopt and scale best practices in healthcare supply chain to offer traceability of products and care processes from bench to bedside to patient outcomes. She is a full professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Odette School of Business, University of Windsor.

Dr. Pierre-Gerlier Forest is a professor of community health sciences and the director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, where he also holds the James S. and Barbara A. Palmer Chair in Public Policy. Prior to joining the University of Calgary in 2016, he served as director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy with the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.