Data-Driven Impacts

AbSPORU emphasizes cross-sector collaboration to address system-wide challenges and improve provincial data and analytics infrastructure to enable effective research-to-practice pipelines. We help to create data-enabled implementation strategies that improve clinical outcomes, reduce low-value interventions, and strengthen health system sustainability.

Examples of these priority-driven initiatives, supported by AbSPORU, include two recent acute care projects: Dialyzing Wisely and Don’t Misuse My Blood and chronic disease management quality improvement projects like the MASLD (NAFLD) Primary Care Pathway initiative.

Dialyzing Wisely is a critical care initiative, funded by Alberta Innovates’ Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Health System (PRIHS) program, and designed to align renal replacement therapy (RRT) in intensive care units (ICUs) with the latest evidence. Alberta’s 20 ICUs had varying practices for initiating dialysis rather than standardized, evidence-based criteria. Yet, research shows that delaying dialysis until specific clinical thresholds are met reduces adverse events, prevents long-term dialysis dependence, and improves patient quality of life.

AbSPORU assisted in the implementation of this initiative through end-to-end data support. This included exploring Connect Care’s data availability, refining operational definitions, developing interactive Tableau dashboards, and conducting data analysis on site-specific audits. Clinicians across the province were empowered to assess their practices in real time and adjust dialysis initiation decisions in accordance with best-practice guidelines.

The results speak for themselves: an 11% improvement in the proportion of dialysis starts meeting evidence-informed criteria, with projected cost savings of $12 million over the initial three years of the project.

Another PRIHS-funded project, Don’t Misuse My Blood, targets another high-impact priority: reducing avoidable blood tests and transfusions in Alberta’s ICUs and high-risk surgical units. This initiative responds to mounting evidence that unnecessary daily blood tests and transfusions can pose significant harm to patients, causing discomfort, increasing transfusion-related risks, and escalating healthcare costs.

AbSPORU’s Data and Research Services team has been embedded in each phase of the project, providing support for data extraction and definition development, dashboard creation, and analytics. The project uses electronic health data to determine baseline practices and develop clinical guidelines to define avoidable tests and transitions, survey clinical decision drivers, and implement targeted interventions. 

Early outcomes of this initiative are showing a 23% reduction in low-value transfusions, generating an estimated $37,284 in monthly savings with a projected total of over $750,000 in savings by project end (August 2025). Financial significance aside, these reductions respect the gift of blood donation and further the goal of health system partners to reduce patient harm and optimize system capacity.

That village includes AbSPORU’s data and implementation experts alongside researchers, clinicians and quality improvement leads working together through the PRIHS program to enable system-wide improvement.

The development and evaluation of a care pathway for patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatoic liver disease (MASLD, formerly NAFLD), is the first of its kind in Alberta. Over the past decade, AbSPORU has worked closely with hepatologist Dr. Abdel-Aziz Shaheen to address chronic disease management in primary care to improve clinical care pathways to patients with liver disease in Alberta.

By linking clinical, laboratory, pharmaceutical, and administrative data, AbSPORU supported the creation of a comprehensive MASLD cohort, enabling epidemiological insights and practical development of the MASLD Clinical Care Pathway – offering a scalable triage model to stratify patients by fibrosis risk in primary care.

Again, the impact is crucial. Over 90% of patients identified as low risk were managed entirely in primary care, with hepatology referrals reduced by over 30% (from 40% prior to implementation of the pathway to just 8.5%). This reduction preserves specialist resources for the highest-need patients while reducing wait times, signaling how data-enabled primary care pathways have the ability to improve chronic disease management.

Through each example, data is used directly to inform care delivery, policy decisions, resource planning, and continuous quality improvement. Each model possesses common threads that make them transferable and scalable:

• Embedded analytics and dashboards
• Data-driven implementation strategies
• Collaborative partnerships
• Measurable outcomes

AbSPORU plays a critical role in enabling a Learning Health System that is not only responsive to Alberta’s health priorities, but is grounded in providing safer, more consistent, patient-centred care.

The success of these projects reinforces how AbSPORU, specifically our Data and Research Services, bridge the gap between research and practice. 

As health systems across Canada grapple with resource constraints and rising complexity, Alberta is demonstrating what is possible when data and collaboration drive quality improvement.