Health Compass

Transforming the healthcare system by transforming healthcare data into actionable insights

Project Overview

Updated July 10, 2024.

The Problem

Physicians now on average spend two hours navigating electronic medical records (EMR) systems for every hour they spend with a patient. Many have 2-3 more hours of “pajama time” EMR work at home. According to one survey, the EMR systems are the second-leading cause of physician burnout (47 percent) behind “too much time spent on bureaucratic tasks.” Outdated and inefficient EMR systems struggle to share information between systems and offer a volume of data that is difficult to sift through. Physicians are commonly faced with the “needle in a hay stack” dilemma. Navigating these systems takes a significant amount of any physicians’ time away from helping their patients.

How We Are Solving It

ORX Surgical is working with other Canadian partners Tali AI, Well Health Technologies and Simon Fraser University to develop a technological software solution that applies artificial intelligence to existing EMR systems. Called the Health Compass, this project proposes to improve Canadians’ access to health care while reducing costs for the medical system. Expected to be completed in 2024, Health Compass will be made available first to 3,000 clinics and to 17,500 healthcare providers in Canada, before international markets are targeted.

By leveraging AI, Health Compass will help physicians navigate through documents within the EMR system faster. Applying AI will also allow patient data to be extracted and analyzed against the latest evidence-based guidelines, helping physicians identify patients in need of urgent care quicker. Unlike other EMR solutions, Health Compass offers a natural voice interface that detects physicians’ voices to streamline clinical documentation and queries. Health Compass will also automate the patient journey in primary care and specialty care to connect patients with life changing care quickly.

Thanks to the Health Compass solution, Canadian physicians are expected to spend up to 55% less time on documentation and sifting through large unactionable patients’ data. The evidence-based resources and recommendations engine within Health Compass will also help physicians make fewer medical mistakes and connect patients with life-changing appropriate care quickly. Ultimately, patients will have more quality time to spend being cared for by providers. The Health Compass solution also offers future opportunities for commercial growth, as associated patient portals and engagement tools that could be developed potentially offer patients greater accessibility to their own medical records.

The Result

The Health Compass I project made substantial strides in reshaping Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) through AI integration. The development and successful deployment of Tali AI’s AI Assistant demonstrated the initial feasibility and desirability of natural language interfaces in clinical settings, saving nearly 12,000 collective hours monthly in clinical documentation by physicians that used Tali AI’s technology. In addition, major development efforts with ORX’s predictive AI technology demonstrated feasibility and expedited their commercial potential with WELL Health.

Announced in July 2024, DIGITAL awarded follow-on investment to the second phase of the Health Compass project, Health Compass II.

Project Lead

Project Partners