ROEB-Digital Transformation

ROEB Transformation is a movement to evolve the Regulatory Operations and Enforcement Branch (ROEB) at Health Canada into the digital era, by all employees for all Canadians.

Today’s regulatory landscape is complex and continually evolving, through rapid scientific innovation, technological advances and global supply chains. ROEB is committed to modernizing and transforming its compliance and enforcement approach to become more agile, assertive, consistent, innovative, proactive and risk-based. Digital Transformation will be a key component to drive change required to thrive in a digital world. ROEB's Strategic Plan sets the vision for Digital Transformation to enable ROEB as a world class compliance and enforcement leader.

The Transformation Office was established to both support and lead this transformation movement by collaborating with compliance and enforcement programs to curate the mindset critical for change. As part of this movement, the Transformation Office, in collaboration with many divisions and programs within ROEB and beyond, is testing and applying novel technologies to advance compliance and enforcement into the digital era.

Technology Being Tested

Natural Language Processing (Artificial Intelligence):

There are several projects testing Natural Language Processing to support uses cases within ROEB. Project Cipher is a prime example of this technology to support the inspection programs. Project Cipher began as a Solutions Fund project to test the technology applied to inspection observations to create an automated process to assign risk to each observation and other business process requirements critical within many inspection programs (for example: assignment of "Standard Lines").

Robotics & Remote Sensing (Drones and Satellites)

As part of a Solutions Fund project called Hummingbird, ROEB has been testing data collected using drones and satellites to assess value when applied to outdoor cannabis inspections. To find out more, please visit the Hummingbird repo.

Computer Vision (Artificial Intelligence):

Project Cyclops, a ROEB Solutions Fund project, leverages computer vision to detect and interpret text in images via optical character recognition. This technology supports checking instances of non-compliance in natural health project labels examined by inspectors.

Virtual Reality:

Project Apollo started

Social Media Monitoring (Artificial Intelligence):

Project Kelpie

Geographic Information Systems:

Project

Web Scraping:

Project Sparrow

Technology Being Piloted

Robotic Process Automation

Pilot with UiPath (Medical Device)

- pilot with Blueprism (ALR)

- tech assessment/OA and procurement

Digital Notebooks

POD-TBI is currently experimenting with “SceneDoc” application, a Digital Notebook solution created and designed with regulatory officers and their needs in mind.  This mobile software fills many of the gaps that currently exist for ROEB C&E inspectors in the field, including their ability to effectively and efficiently collect, track, and store information from an inspection using smartphone or tablet.  The SceneDoc – Digital Notebook would also provide a solution for extracting digital content, such as pictures, video and other multimedia from smartphones.

Technology Being Used

- Vidcruiter