Organizers
Dr. Mirella Veras
Department of Physical Therapy
University of Manitoba
Dr. Veras is an Assistant Professor focused on advancing clinically meaningful and equitable rehabilitation and telerehabilitation. Her work emphasizes the responsible translation of data-driven technologies into real-world care pathways.
She brings expertise in rehabilitation outcomes, implementation science, and patient-centred approaches to support safe and effective adoption of AI-enabled interventions.
Dr. Arnaud Mbadjeu
The Ottawa Hospital & University of Ottawa
Dr. Mbadjeu is an anesthesiologist and researcher whose work bridges clinical practice, healthcare systems, and innovative technologies. His research focuses on improving perioperative care and surgical outcomes.
He leads studies on the development and implementation of AI in perioperative settings, with a strong emphasis on patient safety and real-world clinical impact.
Émilie Valiquette
The Ottawa Hospital
Émilie Valiquette is a digital transformation leader at The Ottawa Hospital, where she serves as Interim Senior Project Manager and Digital Experience Lead within the New Campus Development and Digital Solutions portfolios. She leads enterprise initiatives in artificial intelligence deployment, digital strategy, and remote care models.
Her work focuses on translating innovation into real-world impact, embedding quality improvement, governance, and change management into scalable, system-level solutions that enhance both patient and clinician experience.
A strong advocate for co-design, Émilie works closely with clinicians, patients, technical and frontline teams to ensure digital solutions are adopted, trusted, and sustainable.
Dr. Fateme Rajabiyazdi
Department of Computer Science & Community Health Sciences
University of Calgary
Dr. Rajabiyazdi is an Assistant Professor specializing in data visualization and sensing-driven analytics for healthcare applications. Her work focuses on developing computational techniques for analyzing human movement and health-related data in clinical and remote care systems.
She contributes expertise in system design, validation, and monitoring of multimodal data, bridging ethical governance requirements with practical evaluation strategies for AI in healthcare and rehabilitation.
Dr. Hamid Mansoor
Department of Computer Science
University of Manitoba
Dr. Mansoor’s research focuses on mobile health, data visualization, and the integration of AI into wearable and smartphone-based health systems. His work explores real-world applications for chronic disease management and everyday health monitoring.
He designs and evaluates systems that leverage behavioral and health data to support personalized and accessible healthcare solutions.
Dr. Camilo E. Valderrama
Department of Applied Computer Science
University of Winnipeg
Dr. Valderrama is an Assistant Professor whose research focuses on data-driven methodologies to enhance patient safety. His work includes applications in EEG-based emotion detection and population-level health data analysis.
He contributes expertise in AI-driven decision support and practical approaches for improving healthcare outcomes through data analytics.
Dr. Ouwen Huang
Gradient Health
Dr. Huang builds medical data infrastructure to enable responsible AI development at scale. His work focuses on secure, scalable access to clinical datasets and implementation of privacy-preserving, auditable systems for healthcare AI.
He brings an industry perspective on deploying responsible AI across real-world healthcare data pipelines and collaborations.
Mathieu LeBreton
The Ottawa Hospital
Mathieu (Matt) LeBreton is currently the Interim Director of Digital Experience for the New Campus Development and Biomedical Engineering at The Ottawa Hospital (TOH), where he leads digital experience planning initiatives in alignment with organizational strategy.
He works closely with TOH’s Digital Solutions leadership team to ensure strategic alignment between project planning activities and current institutional priorities.
Prior to this role, Matt held regional and leadership positions in clinical operations for trauma and critical care, and served as a flight nurse in the Canadian Arctic supporting Inuit communities.
He is a critical care nurse with a Master’s in Healthcare Quality from Queen’s University, and holds a certificate in Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
He is committed to prioritizing patient and staff experience, ensuring a strong clinical perspective is embedded early in digital health planning. He also contributes to national standards development through his work with the Canadian Standards Association on digital infrastructure and health technologies.
Kara Kitts, MHA
The Ottawa Hospital
Kara brings over 15 years of experience in the healthcare sector, with extensive expertise in healthcare transformation, process improvement, change management, stakeholder relations, and facilitation.
She holds a Master of Health Administration from the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management and certifications in Lean/Six Sigma and change management.
Kara is currently Director of Innovation and Community and Social Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital, where she leads and manages innovation programs and primary care portfolios.
Prior to this role, she worked at KPMG within the Health and Life Sciences practice, leading and implementing major healthcare transformation initiatives across North America. She also held roles at Unity Health Toronto, focusing on quality improvement and system-level change.
