Focus Areas

Understanding healthcare's past and shaping its future.

Two areas that connect our past with our future

We're here to support your work on Canadian healthcare's past and its future. Together, these two fields help us to ensure that people are always at the centre of Canadian care. Get funding and join the networks we convene in two areas:

healthcare

Bringing compassion into modern, technology-driven care

history

The history of medicine

Compassionate care and technology

Healthcare technology is a two sided coin. It can bring countless benefits to patients, but also poses risks, such as dehumanizing care providers and recipients.

We fund work that keeps healthcare grounded in compassion, while still supporting innovative technologies.

See more of the work that's happening in this area and look at our funding opportunities and resources.

"People are apprehensive about that which is unfamiliar, even when they stand to benefit greatly from it. As those who shape the digital health landscape seek to build trust, patients and caregivers have a crucial place in deciding what is worthy of trust."

- Dr. Melissa McCradden, PhD MHSc(c)
Bioethicist, The Hospital for Sick Children

"History can be pigeonholed as fusty and antiquarian, dealing with long-past events of no relevance to the present but history is as relevant as other approaches to evidence-based policy making."

- Virginia Berridge
Director of the Centre for History in Public health, University of London; Author of "Why Policy needs history (and historians)", based on a talk at AMS Healthcare's 80th anniversiary invitational symposium

The history of medicine

We're Canada's primary source of funding in this field. Previously understudied, the history of medicine is now a thriving discipline across the country.

We fund endowed Chairs at eight universities across the country, including our most recent addition, a Chair of Indigenous Health and Indigenous Traditional Medicine at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.

See more of the work that's happening in this area and check out funding opportunities and resources.