05 Feb 2025 | 3 MIN READ
InteropNow @ VIVE: Smile Digital Health is Accelerating Care with AI
In this episode, Host Sandy Vance is speaking with Duncan Weatherston, the Co-Founder and CEO of Smile Digital Health. Smile Digital Health is an enterprise-level data platform that uses AI and automation to parse its vast collection of data. Duncan explains how AI acts as an accelerator in healthcare delivery, how increased data access allows AI to produce more accurate results, and the challenges that AI adopters still face. Weatherston also discusses Smile’s focus on data quality, and how this focus has expanded alongside AI adoption.
Episode Notes
Sandy Vance and Duncan Weatherston discuss AI and automation at Smile Digital Health, specifically as it applies to structured data. As Weatherston explains, artificial intelligence acts as an accelerating force in healthcare, and allows Smile to deliver care faster than ever. Sandy and Duncan also take an in-depth look at data quality at Smile Digital Health; and Duncan explains the AI and automation innovations that he is watching moving into 2025.
In this episode, they discuss:
A little about Duncan:
Duncan is the Co-Founder and the CEO of Smile Digital Health.
Duncan has a long history of technical solutions leadership, delivery and implementation stretching back to the late 1980s. With a career spanning more than 30 years and a multidisciplinary background in business and product development, systems integration and support, Duncan has been recognized as one of the key thought leaders and innovators in the healthcare IT industry today.
His impact in the healthcare sector includes lead roles in designing and delivering integrated health records, Electronic Health Record (EHR) services, and identity and security infrastructure. He also served as the Lead Architect for the Ontario Digital Health Drug Repository (ODHDR), managing a database with billions of records containing critical medication history for Ontarians in Canada.
While working as the chief architect for the Connecting GTA project in 2011, Duncan and his co-founders realized that the industry needed a high-performance, efficient, interoperable, and secure solution for shared health data; and that the HL7® (Health Level 7) FHIR® (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) open standard was the perfect fit for their goals. Together they began Smile Digital Health, which kicked off its first commercial release of Smile CDR in December of 2016. Today, Smile Digital Health is a company of over 300 staff with over 200 global implementations of the Smile Health Data Fabric.
Duncan holds the vision of #BetterGlobalHealth where the future of healthcare is grounded in a seamless integration of electronic health and healthcare delivery, eliminating artificial distinctions. Duncan's management style is characterized by team-building with a practical and results-oriented approach and inspirational real-life vision of what healthcare should look like for every person. His focus is driving digital health transformation at the organizational, regional and global levels so that appropriate and timely healthcare can be accessed by every person, when they need it, wherever they are.
Episode Notes
Sandy Vance and Duncan Weatherston discuss AI and automation at Smile Digital Health, specifically as it applies to structured data. As Weatherston explains, artificial intelligence acts as an accelerating force in healthcare, and allows Smile to deliver care faster than ever. Sandy and Duncan also take an in-depth look at data quality at Smile Digital Health; and Duncan explains the AI and automation innovations that he is watching moving into 2025.
In this episode, they discuss:
- The challenges healthcare data platforms face when scaling
- How Smile Digital Health helps practitioners deliver care by providing them with access to data
- How AI works as an accelerator in healthcare
- How the amount of data behind Smile Digital Health allows it to produce verifiable answers with AI
- The value of structured data in transforming care
- Smile Digital Health’s strategies to maximize data quality
- Why data quality is higher and more reliable than it’s ever been
A little about Duncan:
Duncan is the Co-Founder and the CEO of Smile Digital Health.
Duncan has a long history of technical solutions leadership, delivery and implementation stretching back to the late 1980s. With a career spanning more than 30 years and a multidisciplinary background in business and product development, systems integration and support, Duncan has been recognized as one of the key thought leaders and innovators in the healthcare IT industry today.
His impact in the healthcare sector includes lead roles in designing and delivering integrated health records, Electronic Health Record (EHR) services, and identity and security infrastructure. He also served as the Lead Architect for the Ontario Digital Health Drug Repository (ODHDR), managing a database with billions of records containing critical medication history for Ontarians in Canada.
While working as the chief architect for the Connecting GTA project in 2011, Duncan and his co-founders realized that the industry needed a high-performance, efficient, interoperable, and secure solution for shared health data; and that the HL7® (Health Level 7) FHIR® (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) open standard was the perfect fit for their goals. Together they began Smile Digital Health, which kicked off its first commercial release of Smile CDR in December of 2016. Today, Smile Digital Health is a company of over 300 staff with over 200 global implementations of the Smile Health Data Fabric.
Duncan holds the vision of #BetterGlobalHealth where the future of healthcare is grounded in a seamless integration of electronic health and healthcare delivery, eliminating artificial distinctions. Duncan's management style is characterized by team-building with a practical and results-oriented approach and inspirational real-life vision of what healthcare should look like for every person. His focus is driving digital health transformation at the organizational, regional and global levels so that appropriate and timely healthcare can be accessed by every person, when they need it, wherever they are.
