Forum working to build and share capacity in AI for policy

As artificial intelligence (AI) introduces innovations in how people in many diverse fields approach their work, the Forum is actively engaging in efforts to identify how this rapidly evolving technology can be safely and responsibly used in providing timely, demand-driven evidence support for policymaking – which we refer to as ‘AI for policy.’

Core to our current efforts include:

  • making sure that Canada stays tightly connected to the global work being led by the Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative (ESIC), which is pioneering the use of AI-enabled, policy-scale living evidence syntheses to address the biggest policy questions (or problems) of our time, with both rigour and speed
  • actively engaging in conversations with groups around the world that are also planning for a future where AI is used to in evidence-intermediary roles, to share our own experiences and to learn from theirs
  • thinking strategically about how the work we do as part of our core programs can quickly adapt considering the rapid pace of AI developments; this includes identifying ways that:
    • our ‘Learn how’ courses – particularly those focused on supporting government policymakers and system and organizational leaders to find and use research evidence to inform decision-making – can be adjusted to ‘meet the moment,’ where decision-makers in health and social systems are increasingly relying on AI tools in their policy- and systems-analysis work
    • our databases of evidence syntheses – Health Systems Evidence and Social Systems Evidence – can both contribute to and leverage the ESIC open data system (ODS) that will streamline how we share and reuse evidence-synthesis data
    • our approach to timely, demand-driven evidence synthesis products can be aligned with efforts like the ODS, so that data from these projects is ‘AI-ready’ and shareable with other evidence-support units around the globe, and how we utilize a range of AI-enabled digital evidence synthesis tools (AI-DESTs) to enhance our work (again, drawing on the work of ESIC, which will be launching a living inventory of AI-DESTs in 2026).

As the Forum continues to advance its work and understanding in the ‘AI for policy’ space, we are committed to building and sharing capacity with domestic and global partners.