Danina Kapetanovic

Danina Kapetanovic has over 20 years' experience in healthcare and international development. Trained as a speech language pathologist, she set off to work for the United Nations office in Iraq, where she helped build the healthcare system in Northern Iraq, focusing on identifying healthcare needs, developing policy and building healthcare facilities. 

Following this she moved to Rome to work for the World Food Programme, and later to New York to work for Unicef. "I've spent a good chunk of my career moving, living in different places and working for different agencies" she says. "I would say the prevailing theme that I had focus on previously was maternal and child health and nutrition. Working in that context is very challenging, and to foster the idea of sustainable development it's absolutely necessary to think about measures that tap into local capacity and ingenuity, and innovation is at the forefront."

She eventually settled back in Canada and into a role as the executive director of an organization called Hacking Health, which fosters innovation in digital health, rooted in the idea of interdisciplinary collaboration. "The organisation developed a methodology rooted in and Human Centered Design in order to bring technologists and healthcare professionals around the same table and get them to innovate. In that context I met Dr Lawrence Rosenberg, the CEO of CIUSSS West-Central Montreal and Jewish General Hospital." 

After conversing over a number of months about his vision for the network he offered Kapetanovic the position of Strategic Advisor. "I was given with the mandate to conceptualise and launch an innovation hub that's centered on connected health, and but also to bring about private and public partnerships and instigate a culture of innovation." 

Kapetanovic also brings with her experience of best practices in digital innovation, and how these can be implemented and integrated inside the healthcare system. 

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