New Brunswick becomes Canada’s 1st Province to Give Patients Safe, Clinician-Approved AI Support Around the Clock
Horizon Health Network and Vitalité Health Network have launched Seamless Answers, making New Brunswick the first Canadian province to offer patients a safe, clinician-approved AI assistant through a province-wide initiative.
SeamlessMD
Horizon Health Network and Vitalité Health Network are celebrating their recent launch of Seamless Answers: a conversational AI feature within their existing SeamlessMD care journey platform for maternity care, cardiac care, orthopedic surgery, liver and pancreas surgery, colorectal surgery and gynecology. While several organizations across Canada have deployed this technology, New Brunswick is the first province to offer patients a safe, clinician-approved AI assistant through a province-wide initiative.
Patients are already using AI to answer health questions - research shows 60% turn to general-purpose tools like ChatGPT, most often outside business hours when their care team is unreachable. A patient who has had surgery might ask: "when can I take my dressing off? will my stitches fall off on their own?". However, tools like ChatGPT can make mistakes when answering because it knows nothing about a patient’s specific procedure, medications or care instructions. Seamless Answers was built to close that gap.
Seamless Answers uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to answer patients’ questions exclusively from Horizon Health Network and Vitalité Health Network’s clinician-approved patient education library already in SeamlessMD - not the open internet. Every answer cites its source and links back to the original page so patients can read the full instructions. When a question falls outside the approved content, patients are directed to contact their care team. The feature supports multiple languages and includes guardrails fine-tuned for clinical environments. This ensures patients receive timely, safe and appropriate answers to their questions.
55% of patient questions to Seamless Answers have been asked outside business hours - overnight or on weekends - confirming that this AI feature is filling a critical gap for patients.
“When patients have questions about their care, having access to reliable information is a key component of quality health care. This new feature (Seamless Answers) allows them to ask questions and get sound information anytime, including outside of normal business hours when they may not be able to contact their care provider or team.”
“Patients already expect banking and travel to work at 2 AM, and they're starting to expect the same of healthcare. It’s exciting to see that New Brunswick is a leader in safe, appropriate AI for supporting patients.”
