Towards Technological Health: Improving Access to Public Healthcare in B.C. by Integrating Virtual Care and Predictive AI

Access to public healthcare within British Columbia is inadequate and unequally distributed. This decreases physical and mental health outcomes for patients and their healthcare workers. B.C.’s five regional health authorities (RHAs) have failed over 50% of all performance targets set annually by the Ministry of Health, which has limited power due to the fragmented provincial system. Virtual care seemed like a prominent solution during the onset of the COVID- 19-induced lockdown, yet support has decreased since in-person activities resumed. However, Fraser Health is actively implementing new virtual care efforts integrated with predictive AI systems. Predictive AI has the potential to increase virtual care serviceability and provide a detailed schema of day-to-day operations, encouraging improvements towards performance targets that ultimately increase access to public healthcare. To achieve this potential, independent panels and analysis of previous new-technology scale-ups within established healthcare systems, such as eConsult, are advised.