The HIVE
UCalgary Nursing Health Systems Transformation Initiative
The HIVE empowers innovators and change agents to enhance health and health-care delivery
Digital health is changing healthcare. Our HIVE initiative will face critical challenges head on by applying transdisciplinary solutions. It will draw diverse leaders and partners together to understand and solve urgent healthcare and health system needs, including significant equity challenges.
Nurses are the largest single group of healthcare professionals in Canada and the world. They are the backbone of patient care, mainstays in community health and education and foundational in healthcare leadership and operations. Nurses are also critical to data collection and use and driving system transformation. Guided by a broad holistic, inclusive view of health, nurses have long provided care across the continuum and lead progression to optimal health.
Drawing upon this expertise and in response to the rapid advances of digital health, HIVE will be a place to engage academic colleagues, community, and industry partners and together, co-create innovative solutions through transdisciplinary collaboration.
The initiative will focus on important directives to:
- Build capacity for innovation and transformation, including developing trainees and advancing curriculum, competency, and leadership
- Encompass policy leadership and consultation
- Engage with existing social innovation infrastructure
- Improve connectivity between partners, including critical patient, community, and industry partners
Populations of Focus
Our Pillars
Compassionate Care
- Mobilizing expertise and research for best practice outcomes
Systems Innovation
- Infusing innovations into health and social policy
Health-care Workforce
- Developing leaders that foster creativity in people and practice
Pathfinders in Practice
Sponsored by the Faculty of Nursing, this research initiative formalizes a partnership between the Faculty of Nursing and the Alberta Children's Hospital. This collaboration seeks to empower nurses to actively engage in research that can directly improve patient care and outcomes in pediatric settings.
This research looks into the barriers and facilitators to bedside research by nurses and allied health professionals to co-design and pilot a research program which will bridge academia, research, and practice.
Currently, the initiative is in the stage of conducting an environmental scan of the 17 major pediatric care centers across Canada. The goal is to understand the landscape of pediatric nursing research across the country, identify gaps, and develop strategies to strengthen the research capabilities and innovation potential of nurses in these critical healthcare settings.
Transdisciplinary Activation Events
Our events engage transdisciplinary colleagues, students, faculty and staff, alongside patients, community and industry partners in collaborative conversations about health, health-care and accessibility. HIVE events focus on actioning transformative changes at the systems level.
- The HIVE: Health Innovated | A Transdisciplinary Strategy Activation Event funded by the Initiating Connector Grant. This event took place on January 9, 2024.
- The HIVE Summit: From Dialogue to Design, funded by a Consolidating Connector Grant. This event took place on June 3, 2024.
- Post-Reproductive Women’s Health Symposium. This event will take place on Spring 2025.
- Nursing Innovation Showcase. This event will take place on Spring 2025.
Social Impact Starter Series
The Social Impact Starter Series was co-created by the VPR Social Innovation Initiative, Innovate Calgary’s Social Innovation Hub, Alberta Innovates, and the HIVE. It is a 5-part workshop that focuses on equipping our participants with essential soft skills and practical tools in the areas of leadership, public speaking/pitching, networking, storytelling, and communicating their research/challenge/problem. The workshop welcomes participants (Social Impact Leaders) from across campus, including students, faculty/staff, and alumni interested in leadership, social impact, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Uncharted Series: Activators Solving Grand Health Challenges
COMING SOON
This is a series of nurse-led transdisciplinary meet-ups which will invite participants to explore real-world health, healthcare, and accessibility problems presented by researchers and subject matter experts. Participants will form activator teams who will deeply explore the problem and ideate potential solutions. Activator teams with compelling solutions will receive support from The HIVE so they may bring their ideas into action. Stay tuned for more details and get ready to join us in shaping the future of health and accessibility.
Innovation Toolkit
COMING SOON
A workshop that teaches practical skills using Design Thinking and Patient Experience methods to look at problems differently and innovate creatively.
Dr. Tracie Risling moderated panellists Dr. Karen Benzies, Olha Shaposhynyk, Sue Crawford, Dr. Michael Kallos, Dr. Sandra Davidson.
The Hive: Health Innovated
On Jan. 9, 2024, we hosted a strategy activation event to bring together nurse leaders, transciplinary colleagues and community and industry partners to lay the foundation for HIVE's strategic direction.
The event featured a fireside chat with five transdisciplinary panelists who shared their visions for the future of health, the innovations/collaborations needed to realize this vision, and the role of The Hive in achieving this future.
Panellists
- Dr. Sandra Davidson – Dean & Professor, Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary
- Sue Crawford – Manager, Health Systems Transformation Initiative, Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary
- Olha Shaposhnyk – PhD Student, Biometric Technologies Lab, Dept of Biomedical Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary
- Dr. Karen Benzies – Director, Social Innovation; Professor, Faculty of Nursing, University of Calgary
- Dr. Michael Kallos – Director, Biomedical Engineering Calgary Initiative; Dept Head & Professor, Dept of Biomedical Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary
Live doodle by artist Aaron Russell captured at Jan. 9, 2024 transdisciplinary strategy activation event
From left, Dr. Sandra Davidson, Sue Crawford, Dr. Tracie Risling, Navjot Virk.
The HIVE Team
Interested in getting involved with UCalgary Nursing's HIVE? Contact Sue Crawford Manager, HIVE