Derek Ritz

Derek Ritz

Derek Ritz

Principal Consultant, ecGroup Inc.
Involved with IHE since 2008

I am involved with the governance of IHE, presently, as the IHE Canada Liaison. IHE Canada is embedded within our national digital health agency, Canada Health Infoway. I coordinate with colleagues at Infoway to represent and articulate Canada’s participation on the IHE International Board.

I also have been involved, for a number of years now, in the work of the IT Infrastructure (ITI) and Quality, Research and Public Health (QRPH) technical committees; I’ve been a QRPH co-chair for the last 6+ years. In collaboration with teammates from the open source OpenHIE initiative (https://ohie.org/), I’ve helped co-author and promote adoption of a family of IHE Profiles specifically focused on the requirements of low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Recently, I’ve helped lead exciting and impactful global efforts focused on computable care guidelines (https://vimeo.com/347427025) and international patient summaries (https://vimeo.com/394932453).

Supported by the US PEPFAR programme (https://www.state.gov/pepfar/), and in partnership with CDC, WHO, University of Oslo, Hamilton Health Sciences, and others, we are helping LMICs leverage digital health to improve the lives of their citizens. It is important work and I’m proud of IHE’s crucial role in moving it forward.