Provincial Geriatrics Leadership Ontario (PGLO) will join researchers, innovators, older adults, caregivers and health-system leaders at the 2026 AGE-WELL Annual Conference to advance an important conversation: as artificial intelligence develops at extraordinary speed, how do we ensure that innovation translates into meaningful improvements in care for older adults?
The AGE-WELL Annual Conference takes place November 2–4, 2026 at The Westin Ottawa. This year’s theme, “From Innovation to Impact: Powering Canada’s AgeTech Ecosystem,” focuses attention on moving new technologies beyond innovation itself toward real-world impact. AGE-WELL expects more than 450 participants from academia, industry, health and community care, government, and the older adult and caregiver communities. For Provincial Geriatrics Leadership Ontario (PGLO), that conversation includes an important question: How do clinicians determine which emerging technologies are actually ready to improve care?
At the conference, PGLO Executive Director Dr. Kelly Kay and Asghar Khan, a MHSc Candidate from Western University, two of the project collaborators, will share work exploring the practical application of artificial intelligence in geriatric medicine through the poster, Chasing Clinical Utility: Clinician challenges evaluating artificial intelligence in everyday older adult care. The work draws on a scoping review of AI applications across five areas highly relevant to the care of older adults: dementia, falls, frailty, homecare use and polypharmacy.
The review identified 97 studies representing approximately 3.8 million patient records across 24 countries. The research found a field that is broad, diverse and developing rapidly, but also one in which determining clinical usefulness can be difficult. Only 9.3% of included studies were randomized trials, and 68% did not report area under the curve (AUC) values, one common measure that can help assess the performance of predictive or classification models.
Those findings point toward a broader challenge for health care. Technical performance alone cannot tell clinicians whether an AI application will improve care. Says Dr. Nihal Haque, one of the study co-authors “The question isn’t simply whether AI can make an accurate prediction. We need to know whether it addresses a meaningful clinical need, improves on the tools we already have, and can make a difference in the care of older adults.” Dr. Haque is the Chief Medical Information Officer and a practicing geriatrician at Scarborough Health Network and recent presenter in PGLO’s Leadership Series on the topic of Artificial Intelligence.
Before adopting a new technology, clinicians and health systems also need to understand whether it addresses an important care problem, has been tested in relevant populations and real clinical settings, compares favourably with existing approaches, and produces benefits that justify the costs, risks and implementation demands involved. These considerations are reflected in the practical clinician questions developed from the review for the conference poster.
Starting with the care problem, not the technology
One of the strongest messages emerging from the work is straightforward: AI development should begin with an identified clinical or patient need, rather than with the technology itself. That means involving older adults, care partners and clinicians in defining the problems worth solving. It also means moving beyond demonstrations of what an algorithm can do toward evidence showing whether it makes a meaningful difference within actual care.
The team’s review highlights several priorities for moving the field forward: testing implementation as well as technical performance; comparing AI approaches with established clinical assessments and standards of care; improving reporting of clinically meaningful performance measures; and ensuring that AI technologies are developed and validated with populations representative of the people who will ultimately use or be affected by them. Equity is particularly important. Only 23.7% of studies in the review reported participants’ ethnicity, and the review identified no included studies reporting Indigenous participants.
Moving from innovation to impact
These clinical questions align closely with AGE-WELL’s emphasis on bridging groundbreaking research and real-world impact. Now in its 11th year, the annual conference brings together an ecosystem that includes researchers, startups, industry leaders, trainees, older adults, caregivers and government representatives to help shape the future of aging in Canada. For PGLO, bringing a geriatrics perspective to this discussion means keeping the focus on the people, care needs and health-system challenges that technology is intended to serve.
The goal is not to slow innovation. It is to help ensure that promising innovations can be distinguished from technologies that are not yet sufficiently validated, useful, equitable or ready for implementation. As the PGLO conference poster concludes:
Clinical value, not technological novelty, should drive AI development and adoption in geriatric care.
That principle provides an important lens as Canada’s AgeTech community comes together in Ottawa to consider how to move from innovation to impact.
The 2026 AGE-WELL Annual Conference takes place November 2–4, 2026 at The Westin Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario.
Citation:
Kay, K. A., Kim, J., Khan, A., Yacoub, D., Maharaj, S.-A., & Haque, N. (2026, November 3-4). Chasing clinical utility: Clinician challenges evaluating artificial intelligence in everyday older adult care [Poster presentation]. AGE-WELL Annual Conference, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.