Telehealth moved from pandemic necessity to a permanent part of Canadian healthcare. The next transformation may be even bigger: AI-enabled care, digital therapy and a workforce increasingly built around technology.
By Healthcare Reporter
From emergency response to healthcare infrastructure
The COVID-19 pandemic permanently changed how Canadians think about accessing healthcare. What was once viewed largely as an emerging alternative to traditional care became, almost overnight, an essential way of connecting patients with physicians, nurses, therapists and other health professionals.
The pandemic may have accelerated the transition, but the underlying problem remains: Canada has a significant gap between the healthcare services Canadians need and the capacity of the system to provide them.
That gap is creating a new role for digital health—and a new kind of healthcare workforce.
Telehealth was initially adopted at extraordinary speed during COVID-19 to reduce physical contact and maintain access to care. Although use declined after public-health restrictions ended, it did not disappear.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) describes virtual care as a continuing component of healthcare delivery, with potential to improve access and reduce costs for patients and health systems. CIHI also notes that more evidence is needed to determine where virtual care produces the greatest benefits and whether access is equitable.
Recent Statistics Canada data confirms that virtual care has become embedded in patient experience. Among Canadians who had virtual appointments with family doctors or nurse practitioners, 77.9% used telephone-only appointments, while 9.1% used video-only. For specialist appointments, 62.1% were telephone-only and 21.8% were video-only.
Patients also reported important advantages: avoiding travel, saving time and having their needs addressed remotely. Overall, 40.3% said they were satisfied and another 40.5% very satisfied with their most recent virtual appointment.
The lesson is increasingly clear: telehealth is no longer simply a pandemic workaround. It is becoming another channel through which healthcare is delivered.
The workforce is becoming digital
The implications for Canada’s healthcare workforce extend well beyond physicians providing video appointments.
Healthcare organizations increasingly need professionals who can work across electronic medical records, virtual-care platforms, remote monitoring, digital therapeutics, cybersecurity, data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Statistics Canada’s 2025 Survey on the Use of Digital Technologies by Health Care Providers found that 92% of healthcare providers had access to a digital health system in their primary practice setting. Yet only 52% reported using digital systems to share patient clinical information electronically with providers outside their main practice setting. Even more striking, 78% experienced at least one barrier that limited or prevented electronic information sharing.
This illustrates one of the central challenges facing digital health: technology adoption is advancing faster than interoperability.
Canada does not simply need more technology. It needs healthcare professionals who can use technology effectively while maintaining clinical judgment, privacy, patient relationships and continuity of care.
CIHI’s 2026 analysis found that 97% of Canadian family physicians were using electronic medical records in their practices, while adoption of digital communication with providers outside their practices has increased rapidly since 2022.
The digital health workforce therefore increasingly includes both clinicians and specialists who can make digital systems work safely and effectively.
“The future digital health professional may be neither a technologist nor a traditional clinician, but a clinician who understands technology—and knows when not to rely on it.”
Telehealth as a response to healthcare gaps
The workforce challenge makes virtual care particularly important.
CIHI reported that 5.7 million Canadian adults did not have a regular healthcare provider in 2024. At the same time, the supply of family physicians has declined slightly over the previous five years, highlighting the mismatch between available capacity and growing demand.
Telehealth cannot manufacture more physicians. But it can change how scarce clinical expertise is deployed.
A virtual consultation can eliminate unnecessary travel, connect rural patients with specialists, support follow-up appointments and allow certain services to be delivered outside traditional clinical settings.
For patients managing chronic conditions, virtual care can also become part of an ongoing relationship rather than a one-time appointment.
The opportunity is therefore not simply to replace an office visit with a video call. It is to redesign care around the patient’s needs.
The next phase: AI-enabled healthcare
Artificial intelligence could take this transformation considerably further.
AI is already being explored for administrative automation, clinical documentation, decision support, patient communication, risk identification and personalized care.
For healthcare professionals facing growing workloads, one of the most immediate opportunities may be reducing administrative burden. Properly implemented AI could assist with documentation, summarize clinical information and help organize workflows, allowing clinicians to spend more time with patients.
But AI also changes the skills healthcare workers will need.
Future clinicians may increasingly need to understand how AI systems generate recommendations, recognize their limitations, protect patient information and determine when human intervention is required.
The future digital health professional may therefore be neither a technologist nor a traditional clinician, but a clinician who understands technology—and knows when not to rely on it.
Digital therapy moves into the mainstream
Mental healthcare may become one of the most significant areas of digital transformation.
Canada already has evidence that technology-supported therapy can expand access. Internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (ICBT), for example, has been used in Saskatchewan for 15 years through a publicly funded program that has served more than 14,300 clients. Researchers describe ICBT as one of the most extensively researched forms of digital mental health care.
The next evolution involves AI-supported mental-health tools.
A 2026 national survey released by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and Mental Health Research Canada found that approximately six million Canadians had used AI-enabled tools for mental-health support during the previous year. Forty-five percent of people who accessed mental-health care did so virtually, either entirely or partly. At the same time, trust in AI remains limited: only 14% reported trusting AI mental-health tools, with just 2% saying they trusted them completely.
That combination—rapid adoption alongside limited trust—may define the next stage of digital therapy.
AI could provide personalized exercises, behavioural prompts, monitoring and between-session support. But it should complement professional care rather than automatically replace it, particularly where diagnosis, crisis intervention or complex clinical decisions are involved.
Building the workforce for what comes next
Canada’s healthcare challenge is not simply a shortage of people. It is also a shortage of capacity, connectivity and time.
Telehealth has demonstrated that technology can help extend that capacity. AI may extend it further.
But the transition will require investment in digital skills, interoperability, cybersecurity, clinical governance and evidence-based implementation. It will also require attention to the digital divide so that technology does not create another barrier for patients who lack reliable internet access, devices or digital confidence.
The post-COVID healthcare system is becoming increasingly hybrid: part physical, part virtual and increasingly supported by intelligent digital tools.
For Canada’s healthcare workforce, the question is no longer whether digital health will become part of the job.
It is how effectively the workforce can adapt—and how responsibly Canada can use technology to make healthcare more accessible, connected and patient-centred.
By the Numbers
- 5.7 million Canadian adults did not have a regular healthcare provider in 2024.
- 92% of healthcare providers had access to a digital health system in their primary practice setting.
- 52% reported electronically sharing patient information with providers outside their practice.
- 78% experienced at least one barrier to electronic information sharing.
- 6 million Canadians are estimated to have used AI-enabled mental-health tools in the past year.
Sources
Canadian Institute for Health Information; Statistics Canada; Mental Health Commission of Canada; Mental Health Research Canada; University of Regina/Healthcare Quarterly; World Psychiatry.