Webinar Wednesday - Ensuring Reliability, Equity, and Local Responsiveness in a National Mental Health Crisis Helpline

A national suicide crisis helpline is being developed to provide 24/7, confidential support to individuals in distress across the country. This presentation explores the design of a resilient, privacy-protected, and equitable digital infrastructure underpinning the service. Through collaboration among technology partners, crisis centres, and policy leaders, the initiative demonstrates how cloud-based systems can strengthen reliability, regional responsiveness, and access to care for underserved and remote populations.

Presented by:

Dan Harren, Director of Digital Acceleration & Initiatives, CAMH

Dan Harren is the Director of Digital Acceleration & Initiatives at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario. In this role, he leads a portfolio of regional and pan‑Canadian projects designed to modernize CAMH’s digital infrastructure, drive rapid technology adoption and embed data‑driven solutions across clinical and operational settings.

Dan has supported a number of large-scale IT projects including the migration of CAMH’s network and infrastructure to the cloud, migrating CAMH’s clinical EMR to the cloud, advanced integrated care initiatives to improve patients’ physical and mental health outcomes, and has supported the deployment of tools and technologies to embed Measurement Based Care CAMH. Dan supported the rollout of the technology stack required to deploy the 9‑8‑8 Suicide Crisis Hotline which is a national service serving Canadians in crisis via phone or text. Dan’s is also engaged in the work to build and deploy a pan-Canadian Integrated Youth Services (IYS) federated data platform which will serve Youth, Research, and Integrated Youth Service providers across Canada.

Earn One Continuing Education Unit (CEU) for attending this webinar. 

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