All W21C research and innovation activities fall under the over-riding theme of enhancing patient safety and quality of care. Four sub-themes, described below, define specific research activities. Research in each of the sub-theme areas are coordinated by a Leadership Team that ensures each proposed project fits into the W21C’s strategic Research Agenda, which is guided by elements of a conceptual model for safety and quality of care developed by Dr. Jan Davies (the Winnipeg Model).
The W21C four research sub-themes include:
1. Technology Integration - This theme encompasses research into the development and subsequent integration of appropriate technologies into the clinical practice setting to enhance work flow and processes of care. This theme overlaps considerably with themes 2 and 3.
2. Data, Information, and Knowledge Flow - This theme includes research into methods for enhancing the flow of health data and information from source to user, and also improving its synchronization and prioritization. This theme area also captures research into the process of converting health data (i.e. raw data) into information, and then subsequently converting, through the complex process of knowledge translation, that information into knowledge to yield evidence-based decision-making.
3. Communication and Interaction - This theme encompasses research into the essential process of communication among players in the health care arena, with attention to the complexity of this process, and the development of processes and tools that enhance communication. Beyond communication, the theme also captures research into human factors and the various forms of human-human and human-technology interaction that occur daily in care settings, and that influence (both directly and indirectly) quality of care and patient safety.
4. Organizational and Regulatory Factors - This theme captures research into the organizational and regulatory factors that influence quality of care and patient safety, with the ultimate objective being to produce evidence that will help health care organizations to better align their organizational and management practices with goals of patient safety and quality of care.