Dr. Carolyn Steele Gray

Areas of Focus
Digital Health; Chronic Disease Management; Primary Care
Dr. Carolyn Steele Gray

Dr. Carolyn Steele Gray was appointed a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Implementing Digital Health Innovation in Fall 2021. She is a Scientist at the Science of Care Institute with an appointment with the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health. She also holds an Associate Professor (status) with the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. 

Dr. Steele Gray’s research program focuses on the development, implementation, and evaluation of a novel digital health tool for use in person-centred models of integrated community-based primary health care for patients with complex care needs. Noteworthy, Dr. Steele Gray is leading a Canadian Institutes for Health Research Operating Grant ($1.6 million) entitled Digital Bridge: Using Technology to Support Patient-centered Care Transitions from Hospital to Home (Digital Bridge).

Situated at Sinai Health in partnership with Trillium Health Partners, the Digital Bridge study involves co-designing, implementing, and evaluating a person-centered digital health technology to support patients and family care partners with complex care needs through care transitions from hospital to home. This technology enabled solution is expected to improve patient and family experience with care transitions and health-related quality of life, increase clinician efficiency in care coordination, standardize care transition practices across organizational boundaries, and reduce unnecessary readmission or emergency department visits post-discharge, leading to cost savings.

Recognized internationally, Dr. Steele Gray has presented on panels at the International Conference for Integrated Care, the Danish Digital Health Society for Digital Health’s Annual General Assembly, and has been a guest speaker for the Open Digital Health international network and Health Canada on Digital Health Interoperability. She also is a Senior Associate with the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), where she co-leads a Special Interest Group in Digital Health and Data Enabling Integrated Care, serves on the executive committee for IFIC-Canada. Dr. Steele Gray has served on multiple Scientific Committees for the International and North American conferences on Integrated Care. She is also the Canadian lead for Open Digital Health, non-profit organization seeking to drive accessibility and spread of digital health solutions to improve care delivery, and the co-lead and co-founder of the International Goal-Oriented Care Learning Collaborative, an academic consortium seeking to advance adoption of person-centred goal-oriented care.

Dr. Carolyn Steele Gray
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Location

Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital
1 Bridgepoint Drive
Toronto, Ontario M4M 2B5

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At a Glance

Dr. Steele Gray is a health services researcher with expertise in case study and qualitative research methods.

Dr. Steele Gray has recently been awarded two CIHR grants to develop the eCCDD Network and to evaluate the ePRO tool.

Based on her expertise in eHealth technologies for patients with complex care needs she was invited to participate in the development of the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care’s eHealth Strategy 2.0 as part of their expert delegate panel.

Invited by CIHR to participate in a two-day session aimed at developing new international projects focusing on creation of new technologies to improve health-care systems worldwide.

Major Research Activities

Dr. Steele Gray currently holds a Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) eHealth Innovation Partnership Program (eHIPP) Operating Grant to evaluate the electronic Patient Reported Outcome (ePRO) mobile system through a cluster randomized pragmatic trial of 22 Family Health Team sites across Ontario. 

Dr. Steele Gray is also a researcher on an international comparative study exploring models of integrated community-based primary health care in Ontario, Quebec and New Zealand, funded through a large multi-year CIHR grant where she is focusing of the use of technology in these models of care.