Health Inc Seminar Series is co-hosted by the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, the DLSPH’s Centre for Global Health, and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Accountability and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector. 

Digital technologies including electronic health records and virtual care have transformed the ways that patients access and navigate primary care. These digital technologies also allow their developers the unprecedented capacity to collect vast troves of personal health information. In this seminar, Dr. Sheryl Spithoff will discuss her ongoing research into the ways that digital health companies are collecting and commercializing data about patients, prescribers, and healthcare encounters. Characterized by complex, reciprocal relationships among clinicians, technology vendors, for-profit clinics, data aggregators, and the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Spithoff will describe emerging business models and practices within the digital health industry and what this means for patient privacy, clinical autonomy, and public health.

Recommended readings:

Spithoff, S., McPhail, B., Vesley, L., Rowe, R.K., Mogic, L., & Grundy, Q. (2025). The primary care medical record industry in Canada and its data collection and commercialization practices. JAMA Network Open, 8(5), e257688. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.7688.

Spithoff, S., McPhail, B., Vesley, L., Rowe, R.K., Mogic, L. & Grundy, Q. (2024) How the virtual care industry gathers, uses and values patient data: a Canadian qualitative study. BMJ Open, 14, e074019. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-074019.