91快色

Integrating new technology is a disruptive puzzle for many organizations. For a year, Melanie King had a front-row seat as she researched how a group of health-care professionals learned to apply a new artificial intelligence tool in their work 鈥� and succeeded. How did they do it?

King鈥檚 search for answers helped her earn a from the in the Class of 2023. And her research project changed the trajectory of her career at the 91快色, where she鈥檚 now a director.

Along the way, she overturned misconceptions that AI replaces people and takes the human factor out of health care. 鈥淚f anything,鈥� she says, 鈥渨e鈥檙e seeing how the tools we can create with AI give us the ability to be even more personalized in medicine.鈥�

Curious about personal experiences of health care

King developed a curiosity about personal perspectives of the health-care experience early in her career. As a nurse, King did stints in Africa and northern Canada, where she noticed that the context and environment of each community profoundly affected the lives and experiences of patients and health-care workers alike.

King completed a master鈥檚 degree in nursing (2016) from U91快色, then went on to manage programs at the university that help people change how they conduct health research. Her work nurtured another deep curiosity: how learning takes place alongside the significant changes seen by health practitioners throughout their careers.

Sparked by her growing interest in the role of data in health care, King continued her academic journey, enrolling in the Doctor of Education program at Werklund. 鈥淓verybody says, study something you鈥檙e interested in, or that aligns with your work,鈥� she explains. That鈥檚 exactly what she did.

AI tool translates reams of data

The AI tool that would become a focus of King鈥檚 case-study research is a cardiac registry, a powerful database that combines and compares information entered from multiple sources to help doctors predict and prevent cardiac disease and provide more personalized care. AI can quickly and accurately translate reams of data, using computational algorithms to flag patient risk factors or other patterns that may be missed by manual methods.

King noticed that the role of learning in workplace adoption of AI within health care had received little scholarly attention so she moved ahead with her own transdisciplinary research. King鈥檚 twin areas of interest 鈥� social context and learning during a time of change 鈥� informed her qualitative research approach. 鈥淎nd I was genuinely curious and interested in the role of data to improve patient outcomes,鈥� she says.

In her King explored the perspectives of 16 health-care professionals who had administrative, project or leadership roles in implementing the registry. The study identified four overall themes of impact among the participants: the people involved, the environment where the change takes place, the design of the innovation, and how participants learned new processes and skills.

鈥楶eople play a central role鈥�

The single ingredient most critical to the success of the registry project was the people, especially the project champions. 鈥淔indings from the study revealed that people play a central role in the success of a change event and project implementation.鈥� Her research insights will be useful in the future for health-care leaders implementing similar projects in complex settings.  

She credits her supervisor, PhD, vice-dean at the Werklund School of Education, for her mentorship, advice, and 鈥渂oundless positivity鈥� during her research.

King鈥檚 PhD studies and her career merged about three years ago, when the hired her as its director of program development and implementation for the In the role, she facilitates integration, governance, and analysis of data for cardiovascular research, in collaboration with the , the , and the Mozell Family Analysis Core at the .

鈥淚f we can impact patient care by creating these tools, for example, identify a patient in the ER who has an elevated risk for a complication or severe outcome and intervene before that happens, I think we have a moral obligation to pursue this kind of work.鈥�