Joseph Cafazzo PhD, MHSc

Dr. Joe Cafazzo is helping transform health care. Call him Doctor App, a modern biomedical engineer. Or simply say that he empowers patients, allowing them to stay out of hospital. Either way, Dr. Cafazzo is the senior director at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, a modern facility housing a multi-disciplinary team of more than 60 faculty, associates and students at Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN). His team of doctors, nurses, top software engineers and designers develop ways to keep people out of hospital by creating technologies allowing for self-care at home for those with chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma, end-stage renal disease and congestive heart failure.

These strategies are aimed at helping people before their conditions become acute and medical intervention is required. An example of their innovation is “Bant,” an iPhone app developed by the UHN team which simplifies diabetes management. It connects via Bluetooth to a LifeScan glucometer. Diabetic teenagers find this cool because they are rewarded with iTunes store credits every time they use their glucometer. Dr. Cafazzo has advised and conducted research for public sector policy makers and private sector medical technology companies on the design and safety of technology in healthcare.