Alberta partners with Amii to establish Health Innovation Lab

Alberta is investing $10 million over three years to advance the integration of AI into provincial healthcare.

The provincial funding was announced during a fireside chat between Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) CEO Cam Linke and Alberta Minister of Technology and Innovation Nate Glubish on Wednesday at the Upper Bound AI conference in Edmonton. 

Glubish said the money will help build a partnership that will invite in “the best and brightest medical researchers in the world.”

Glubish said the funding will support the Health Innovation Lab, a new partnership between the Province and Amii to use AI to “accelerate the development and adoption of new technologies” aimed at expanding healthcare capacity, patient outcomes, and system efficiency at AHS.

Glubish said the money will help build a partnership that will invite in “the best and brightest medical researchers in the world.”

“There are so many opportunities for data-driven innovation that can reduce wait times, that can accelerate the development life-cycle of new diagnostics, therapeutics, drugs, and treatments,” he said.

Under the funding framework, the Health Innovation Lab will be able to pursue between 10 and 12 pilot projects each year. Those projects will be selected through proposals submitted to Amii, which will also issue calls for specific types of projects based on priorities established by the provincial government.

Alberta has been proactive in integrating AI into its government workflows, with Glubish spearheading efforts to onboard AI use across the provincial public service. Last year, the Ministry of Technology and Innovation launched its AI Academy, an open-access training program designed to train public servants and citizens with practical AI skills. The ministry’s 2025 mandate letter also outlines goals of accelerating technology adoption to increase efficiency in government. 

Privacy and innovation

Given the sensitivity of healthcare data and the laws governing its use, Glubish said the Health Innovation Lab will use sovereign systems to ensure data never enters American infrastructure or foreign-controlled cloud systems.

“This will be designed with privacy at its core,” Glubish said. “When we do that right, that opens up significant opportunities to move the needle with medical innovation that will solve problems.”

In that light, the Health Innovation Lab will collaborate with the provincial ministries of primary and preventative health services, as well as hospitals and surgical services, to scrutinize and develop a framework for how medical data is used and when. Glubish said that datasets would be anonymized.

“Privacy is paramount. Make no mistake. This is why we want to make sure that we are the ones leading this because the province is already the steward of this data,” he said. “We want to make sure that as the stewards, we are finding the most responsible way by introducing appropriate anonymization protocols to identification protocols to say: only in these scenarios can we invite trusted partners in.”

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Amii.