Inside eHealth 2025: Why Healthcare CIOs Should Pay Attention

This year’s eHealth conference (#eHealth2025) in Toronto, Ontario will once again be a gathering of must-know digital health leaders in Canada. The conference also features more patient participants than ever to go alongside the energy brought by the startups in attendance. Learn more in this exclusive interview.

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Shelagh Maloney, the CEO of Digital Health Canada – a member-supported not-for-profit professional association that connects and empowers individuals as well as organizations working on digital health in Canada. Digital Health Canada is one of the organizers of the annual eHealth conference.

I asked Maloney what attendees can expect at this year’s event, what she is looking forward to the most, and why digital health leaders from Canada AND the United States should be at the conference.

Key Takeaways

1. Patient voices will play a bigger role than ever before. A record number of patients are participating this year, bringing firsthand insight into what works—and what doesn’t—when it comes to digital health adoption and design.
2. Startups are shaking things up. eHealth2025 is seeing a surge in startup participation, creating more opportunities for established players to connect with emerging innovators and fresh ideas.
3. If you’re doing business in Canada, this is the room to be in. With national organizations like CIHI and Canada Health Infoway co-hosting, and a packed exhibitor floor, eHealth is the best place to understand how policy, vendors, and providers align in the Canadian healthcare system.

More Patient Involvement

For years, patients were the audience. Now, they’re becoming the contributing authors of the digital health story in Canada. The eHealth conference has committed itself to incorporate and embrace the patient voice for the past five years. It is nice to see that trend continue at eHealth2025.

“We’ll have more patients at this conference than we’ve ever had,” shared Maloney. “For the past five years we had a patient partner program. This year we had a record number of patients apply. We had a lot of interest from the patient community. When they’re at the table, it changes the dynamic.”

[NOTE: Shelagh and I both agree there is still a lot more work to be done to fully incorporate the patient voice in Canadian healthcare]

Bringing patient voices into the conversation earlier can help avoid costly design missteps, improve adoption, and drive tech initiatives that actually work in the real world. If you’re not already including patient input in your roadmap reviews or pilot testing, you’re likely missing a critical perspective.

Startups Are Raising the Stakes for Innovation
eHealth is one of my favorite places to engage directly with Canada’s digital healthcare startups. Why? Because if you are a startup at this conference (attending or presenting) it means you have real traction with healthcare organizations. According to Maloney, startups will be “taking it to the next level” this year at eHealth2025.

“There will be a lot of startups,” confirmed Maloney. “The big vendors are really excited to meet the startups because they don’t get that chance to interact with them. The startup community is taking it to the next level and will change the dynamic. They’re small, they’re hungry, and they just think differently.”

For digital health and health IT leaders, eHealth2025 will be a chance to explore how agile, niche startups can fill the gaps your current platforms or services don’t address. A quick scan of the startup zone could reveal solutions for faster data integration, better patient engagement, or specialized AI tools that are already being tested in Canadian healthcare organizations.

The Place Where Policy, Providers, and Platforms Align
There are plenty of places to talk about digital health, but few where you can actually see the full Canadian healthcare ecosystem come together in one place. eHealth brings together national organizations like CIHI, Canada Health Infoway and Digital Health Canada alongside health agencies from all levels of government, private vendors, startups, and healthcare providers.

That mix gives US and Canadian digital health denizens a rare opportunity to observe—and influence—how policy is turning into practice.

“All the big players are going to be there,” said Maloney. “The entire industry is going to be there. I’m excited about just having everybody together in one room.”

Bringing Digital Health Together in Canada

If your organization is looking to expand into Canada or adapt to new provincial regulations, this is where you need to be. You will meet key players who make purchasing and policy decisions across the Canadian healthcare ecosystem. You will also hear, first-hand, the challenges that healthcare organizations are facing and what they are doing to solve them.

Learn more about the eHealth conference at

Learn more about Digital Health Canada at