Healthcare organizations face the complex challenge of maintaining around-the-clock coverage amid nonstandard schedules. In Canada, nearly one-third of healthcare workers follow irregular hours, including nights, weekends, and rotating shifts. Keeping on-call schedules current is labour-intensive yet essential for quality care and efficiency. Many organizations still rely on manual, fragmented scheduling, leading to miscommunication, coverage gaps, and staff dissatisfaction, ultimately affecting patient outcomes and workflow. This project proposes an AI-enabled scheduling solution to boost productivity, reduce costs and errors, and improve both staff experience and patient care.
This Call for Innovation is being posted in collaboration with Covenant Health to seek out qualified Canadian companies who can meet the following desired outcomes. CAN Health and Covenant Health reserve the right to not move forward with this project at its full discretion and, in particular, if there are no qualified Canadian companies that can reasonably meet the desired outcomes.
To qualify for a CAN Health project, the company must meet ALL of the following criteria:
- Headquartered in Canada (additional criteria apply for companies not headquartered in Canada)
- Majority ownership of both the company and the solution by Canadians
- Solution at Technology Readiness Level (TRL)>7, indicating actual technology completed and qualified through tests and demonstrations
- All the data and AI models (if applicable) must be hosted in Canada and comply with all the Canadian privacy regulations
- Possess all regulatory approvals required for commercialization, such as Health Canada approval
- Completion of all required clinical validity/unity studies
- No need for policy changes to be widely adopted
- Strong use cases in the Canadian health care system
If the company is not headquartered in Canada or the solution is not majority owned by Canadians, additional criteria apply:
- Independent autonomy over business operations and product development (for subsidiaries, affiliates or distributors)
- High Canadian job creation potential, especially in executive and senior management positions
- Commitment of over 70% of contract value to Canada
During the company selection process, preference is given to companies/solutions fully owned by Canadians, followed by those majority owned by Canadians, and finally international companies with a significant presence and economic impact in Canada.
For more information on the Call for Innovation process and the commercialization projects funded by CAN Health Network, please refer to the FAQ page on the CAN Health Network website: https://canhealthnetwork.ca/faq/
Problem Statement:
Covenant Health faces significant challenges in maintaining consistent, 24/7 on-call coverage due to fragmented, manual scheduling processes across 95 distinct service programs. These programs rely on a wide range of tools from paper-based methods to emails and ad hoc digital solutions resulting in operational inefficiencies, increased labour costs, and inconsistent communication. The lack of standardization places undue administrative burden on support staff, medical affairs personnel, and physicians, diverting time and resources away from core clinical responsibilities. This decentralized approach not only strains workflow and staff morale but also compromises responsiveness and patient care. To address these issues, Covenant Health seeks an AI-enabled scheduling solution that will automate and standardize scheduling practices, reduce administrative overhead, improve staff satisfaction, and enhance overall healthcare delivery.
Objectives:
The proposed AI-powered scheduling solution will automate complex scheduling to improve resource utilization, reduce labour costs, and enhance operational agility. By leveraging AI, it will minimize errors, ensure optimal staff-task alignment, adapt to real-time changes, and promote fairness by incorporating staff preferences. The solution will also streamline communication, support proactive planning, and maintain consistent coverage to ensure high-quality patient care.
Essential (mandatory) outcomes:
The integration of an AI-enabled solution to streamline and standardize on-call scheduling is anticipated to result in:
- Optimized Resource Allocation – Measure how efficiently the AI system uses personnel and equipment.
- Reduced Operational Costs – Quantify savings in labour, overtime, and resource use from AI-driven scheduling.
- Improved Productivity – Track how quickly and effectively the AI generates optimal schedules.
- Return on Investment (ROI) – Compare financial benefits of AI scheduling vs. manual processes.
- Scheduling Optimization – Evaluate how well the AI minimizes downtime and maximizes efficiency (e.g., schedule adherence, on-time completion).
- Staff Satisfaction – Measure staff and departmental adoption, satisfaction, and user experience with AI scheduling.
At Covenant Health, the scheduling landscape reflects broader, systemic challenges. Across the organization, 95 separate service program schedules are maintained, each with its own unique format and update method, ranging from traditional paper systems to emails and even advanced AI tools. This lack of consistency has created significant inefficiencies.
In response, various teams have developed stopgap solutions to maintain functionality. The switchboard team, for instance, dedicates 2 to 3 hours every evening to manually transposing disparate scheduling details into a standardized Daily Call Sheet. This workaround requires several hours of manual effort each day. Meanwhile, Medical Affairs has taken on the unexpected responsibility of managing and updating 50 schedules, a task outside their core mandate. Additionally, 35 physicians are dedicating significant portions of their clinical time, often up to 8 hours per week, to coordinate program-specific call schedules. Collectively, these efforts reflect a costly strain on the system, both in terms of efficiency and the misallocation of skilled personnel.
