Video Scaling Up: Danielle Martin at TEDxStouffville

It has been said that the Canadian health care system is a system of pilot projects: islands of excellence in a sea of challenges. In recent years, much work has been done to try to highlight and disseminate successful projects to improve quality, access and equity - and much remains to be done to ensure that we are not all continually trying to reinvent the wheel.

But in the area of learning from each other's failures, we are even further behind. In the policy world, the clinical world and the research world, sharing failures is discouraged - let alone celebrating them. Dr. Danielle Martin will discuss why the health care system needs to learn to scale up both our successes and our failures, and how we might begin to do so.

BIO: Danielle Martin is Vice-President, Medical Affairs and Health System Solutions at Women's College Hospital (WCH). She is a family physician in the Family Practice Health Centre at WCH and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Danielle's focus is on improving health at the system level as well as the individual level. Her clinical work has involved remote northern medicine as well as a current focus on maternity care, and she will complete a Masters of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto in April 2013.

Danielle's policy expertise and passion for equity have made her an emerging leader in the debate over the future of Canada's health-care system. A recipient of the Canadian Medical Association Award for Young Leaders, she sat two terms on the Health Council of Canada from 2005-2011. In 2006 the Ontario College of Family Physicians recognized her as one of three New Family Doctors of the Year.

Danielle was a leader throughout her medical training and served both as President of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students (CFMS) and President of the Professional Association of Interns and Residents of Ontario (PAIRO). In 2006, her first year in practice, she helped launch Canadian Doctors for Medicare, the voice for Canadian physicians who believe in "a high quality, equitable, sustainable health system built on the best available evidence as the highest expression of Canadians caring for one another". She chaired the board of CDM until May 2013.

Danielle serves on a number of boards and was recently named by the Toronto Star in its list of the "13 People to Watch in 2013."

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)