Monika Kastner

Monika Kastner is the Research Chair in Knowledge Translation and Implementation (KTI) at North York General Hospital, Associate Professor of Health Services Research in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto and Affiliate Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health. Monika’s goals are to improve the health of older adults and to advance the science and practice of KTI. Her program of research involves designing innovative, e-Health technologies that optimize health care delivery, clinical decision making, and improved patient outcomes. For example, Monika is leading an initiative to improve the health of older adults with complex care needs. Her team developed KeepWell, a web-based application that empowers older adults and their primary care providers to optimize multimorbidity management. KeepWell considers the health priorities of older adults in creating an action plan for self-management according to different combinations of chronic diseases from among the top 10 (i.e., diabetes, heart disease, COPD, dementia, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart failure, depression, stroke, urinary incontinence). The tool also includes features to promote lifestyle changes via an Avatar coach to customize user experience and self-management in the context of identified disease and lifestyle risks, individualized health priorities and goals; and journaling, tracking and gamification features to enhance sustained interactivity with the application. Monika is also investigating how older adults experience social frailty and planning to create an optimized social frailty intervention that will be incorporated into the KeepWell web-based application to enhance its potential to improve the health of older adults. Her collective work has been recognized by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ontario Ministry of Health and the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science.