Launch of 10-part series on digital health

This webinar is part of a new international series of 10 sessions led by the WONCA Working Party on Digital Health, designed to support family doctors and primary care teams in understanding and integrating digital health into everyday clinical practice. Through a structured programme of sessions, the series aims to share practical, evidence-based insights and foster global exchange on the evolving role of digital technologies in primary care.

Read the announcement of the webinar series.

This first webinar will introduce the series and examine how digital innovation is affecting the quality of care in primary care settings.

Date and time

Tuesday, 12 May 2026

• 09:30 EDT, New York
• 10:30 BRT, São Paulo
• 13:30 UTC
• 14:30 BST, London
• 15:30 CEST, Brussels
• 16:30 EAT, Nairobi
• 17:30 GST, Dubai
• 18:30 PKT, Karachi
• 19:00 IST, New Delhi
• 20:30 ICT, Bangkok
• 21:30 CST, Beijing
• 22:30 JST, Tokyo
• 23:30 AEST, Sydney
• 01:30 NZST, Auckland, Wednesday 13 May

Part 1: Digital Health in Primary Care - Exploring Impact on Quality and Patient Care

Digital technologies are transforming the delivery of primary care. From online consultations and remote monitoring to artificial intelligence and decision-support tools, digital innovation has the potential to reshape patient care and service organisation. However, understanding how these technologies affect the quality of care remains a key challenge.

This introductory session will set the scene for a series exploring digital innovation in primary care through the lens of the six domains of healthcare quality: patient-centredness, effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, equity, and safety. It will also introduce the themes of the upcoming sessions, which will examine how digital innovation can influence each domain and discuss related opportunities, risks, and real-world implementation experiences. The series aims to foster critical discussion on how digital health can be designed and implemented to truly enhance the quality of primary care.

Speaker: Ana Luisa Neves

Ana Luisa Neves is a Clinical Associate Professor in Digital Health and Director of the Global Digital Health Unit at Imperial College, where she leads a team of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, and a practising General Practitioner in London, UK. She is the Chair of the WONCA Working Party on Digital Health. Her research interests focus on the use of digital technologies to deliver safer, more effective, and patient-centred care.

Prior to joining Imperial College, Dr Neves earned her medical degree from the University of Porto in Portugal, where she also completed her specialist training in General Practice in 2013. During her General Practice residency, she undertook academic and research placements at the Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale in Paris and at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School affiliate in Boston. In 2014, Dr Neves moved to London to pursue a PhD in Clinical Medicine at Imperial College London, which she completed in 2018. In 2018, she was awarded a scholarship by the European Association of General Practice, WONCA Europe. She subsequently held a Visiting Scholar appointment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, serving as a Home Hospital International Fellow at Ariadne Labs from 2024 to 2025, where she continues serving as Associate Faculty.

Part 2: Patient Centered Care - Keeping it human in the age of AI

Patient-centered care remains a cornerstone of high-quality primary care, emphasizing the need to understand patients as whole persons with unique feelings, ideas, and expectations.

In an era shaped by digital transformation and increasingly complex health systems, maintaining meaningful patient-clinician relationships is more important than ever.

This webinar will explore the foundations of the Patient-Centered Clinical Method, including empathy, compassion, and sharing power in clinical encounters. We will discuss why patient-centered care matters for both patients and clinicians and how emerging technologies are reshaping care delivery.

Through real-world examples from primary care, the session will offer insights into how family doctors can sustain trust, equity, and human connection in a technologically mediated world.

Join us to reflect on the evolving role of patient-centered care in the digital era.

Speakers: Moira Stewart and Keith Thompson

Moira Stewart PhD, is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine at Western University and formerly the Dr. Brian W. Gilbert Canada Research Chair in Primary Health Care Research from 2003 to 2017. Dr Stewart has published widely on the topic of Patient-Centered Care and has edited, with colleagues, an international series of books applying the patient-centered clinical method. She was Co-Principal Investigator of a CIHR Community-based Primary Health Care Team Grant on Patient-Centered Innovations for Persons with Multimorbidity. She has been a national leader in capacity building for research as the inaugural Principal Investigator on a CIHR Strategic Training Grant on interdisciplinary primary health care research called TUTOR-PHC. Dr Stewart created a researchable database of the Electronic Medical Record data in Southwestern Ontario. She works closely with policy-makers and patients at the provincial level. She was President of the North American Primary Care Research Group from 2003 to 2005. Stewart received the James Mackenzie Medal of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 2004, The College of Family Physicians of Canada Family Medicine Researcher of the Year Award in 2007 and the Maurice Wood Award for Lifetime Contribution to Primary Care Research from NAPCRG in 2017.

Keith Thompson, M.D., is a London, Ontario-based family physician, graduate of the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University, and was awarded Fellowship in the College of Family Physicians of Canada in 2005. He serves as Chief Medical Officer at NuraLogix, and Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Family Medicine. He is also the Associate Director of Research at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University. He is a co-investigator in virtual care studies and has collaborated with colleagues from Western University and WONCA on peer-reviewed publications and two textbook chapters on virtual care. He is a Board Certified Medical Affairs specialist. He is a working group member for Standards related to blood pressure measurement devices for both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Standards Council of Canada, International Organization for Standardization. He is also a former executive member of the WONCA Working Party on Digital Health.

Moderator

Moderator: Hüsna Sarıca Çevik

Hüsna Sarıca Çevik, M.D., is a family physician and Associate Professor of Family Medicine at Ankara University School of Medicine, Türkiye. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Western University, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Department of Family Medicine, Canada, where she works on patient-centred clinical method, the natural history of symptoms in family practice, and digital health. She serves as an Executive Board member and leads the Training and Capacity Building Workstream of the WONCA Working Party on Digital Health. She has also represented WONCA Europe in several EU-funded HPV projects. Her research additionally focuses on HPV and vaccine communication, women’s health, health literacy, and mental health. She has previously held on-site academic and research positions at the University of Leeds, UK, in 2023, and the University of Hong Kong in 2024.

Any queries: digitalhealth@wonca.com