CanSPARK Long-Term Care Consortium

We are partners with the CanSPARK LTC Consortium, a consortium of national, provincial, and territorial partners building a pan-Canadian learning health system for long-term care.

Provincial to Canada-wide impact

CanSPARK is the Canada-wide consortium that brings together the knowledge gained from provincial research and sector partners, such as OnSPARK, to advance research opportunities and continuous improvement in long-term care delivery across the country.

Do you want to see OnSPARK capabilities in your province or region?

CanSPARK is currently working to bring OnSPARK’s data-insight capabilities to long-term care sectors in other provinces and regions.

Contact CanSPARK

info@cansparkltc.com

cansparkltc.ca

Frequently asked questions about the CanSPARK and OnSPARK partnership

  • OnSPARK is a world leading LTC data platform, which informs and supports the CanSPARK LTC Consortium. As a learning health system, OnSPARK delivers integrated actionable data insights to Ontario LTC homes, policymakers, and researchers to support quality improvement, enhance operations, create AI-enabled tools, and improve care for residents.

    CanSPARK is scaling the successful OnSPARK model to other provinces and territories. It uses OnSPARK’s technical framework to build a pan-Canadian LTC data infrastructure. CanSPARK brings together partners across three networks: Data & Knowledge; Research & Learning; and Innovation & Improvement.

  • OnSPARK is collaboratively works with Ontario long-term care homes, research partners and policymakers to create the secure operational infrastructure for data integration, analytics and reporting.

    CanSPARK is building and scaling a federated data model based on OnSPARK. Focuses on governance frameworks and LTC data standards to enable pan-Canadian scalability and interoperability.

  • OnSPARK

    • Ontario LTC homes

    • Policymakers

    • Researchers

    • LTC sector partners

    CanSPARK

    • Provincial & national policymakers

    • Research networks

    • LTC sector partners

    • LTC homes

  • While OnSPARK serves Ontario long-term care homes, CanSPARK operates at the national level, bringing together cross-sectoral partners at the national, provincial, and territorial levels to build a learning health system for LTC. OnSPARK is one of the original and foundational data platforms contributing to this learning health system.

  • OnSPARK brings data that homes already collect onto one platform. LTC homes retain ownership of their data, and it is not shared without their approval.

    CanSPARK is building and scaling a federated data model based on OnSPARK. Focuses on governance frameworks and LTC data standards to enable pan-Canadian scalability and interoperability.

  • OnSPARK was established in 2023. Co-led by Dr. Andrew Costa and Dr. Arthur Sweetman from McMaster University and St. Joseph's Health System.

    CanSPARK’s secretariat is housed at Bruyère Health with McMaster University, St. Joseph’s Health System, Healthcare Excellence Canada, Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence, Canadian Institute for Health Information, Canadian Association of Long Term Care. Together they form the Executive.