Our Team

• 1994 — Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), University of Saskatchewan
• 1994-1999 — Orthopaedic Surgery Residency, University of Saskatchewan
• 1999 — Fellow, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (F.R.C.S.C.)
• 1999-2000 — Adult Reconstruction Fellowship, Stanford University, Stanford, California
• 2000-present — Orthopaedic Surgeon, Rockyview General Hospital, Calgary
• 2001-present — Faculty Member, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary
  • Current Rank: Clinical Professor
• 2006-2010 — Site Chief of Surgery, Health Resource Centre
• 2012-2018 — Site Chief of Surgery, Rockyview General Hospital
• 2013-2018 — Program Director, University of Calgary Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Program
• 2018-2024— Senior Medical Director, Bone & Joint Health Strategic Clinical Network, AHS
• 2018-present — Head, Section of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Calgary, AHS-Calgary Zone
• 2023-present — President, Canadian Arthroplasty Society
• 2024-present — Executive Director, Institute for Improved Health Outcomes

Jason grew up on a farm near Langenburg, SK, and believes this taught him the importance of hard work and a sense of optimism for the future. He is an ardent Saskatchewan Roughrider fan which has definitely taught him patience! His orthopaedic surgery practice is focused on lower extremity arthroplasty (joint replacements) and single limb trauma surgery. He enjoys golf, curling, hiking, biking, boating, and Flames Hockey when he’s not in the OR or at a meeting.

Liz is a results-driven leader with expertise in developing and executing company strategies, managing human resources, and overseeing budgeting processes. With strong skills in government relations and fundraising, Liz ensures organizational growth and financial sustainability while fostering a positive workplace culture and maintaining strategic partnerships.

Liz works with Dr. Jason Werle (Executive Director) and Christopher Smith (Director of Operations [Technical]) to align organizational strategies and operational goals with innovative technology solutions.

Prior to joining the organization in 2010, Liz coordinated the deployment of electronic medical records in clinics across Alberta. She has experience in managing client relations, implementing business solutions, and fostering customer loyalty.

With a deep understanding of healthcare technology, Christopher oversees the processes and sophisticated information systems that support innovative change in healthcare service delivery, guiding organizational efforts to support service providers and administrators in implementing change.

Christopher is charged with ensuring continued operational excellence for all technical aspects of organizational operations, including its information systems, measurement and analysis functions, data security and governance, as well as internal and external reporting.

Christopher works with Dr. Jason Werle (Executive Director) and Liz Rowan (Chief Operating Officer) to align organizational strategies and operational goals with innovative technology solutions. He holds an MBA from the University of Calgary and has spent over two decades driving quality improvement in health care in Alberta.

As the Honorary Chair of the Institute for Improved Health Outcomes, Ann is committed to continuing the work of her late husband, J.R. (Bud) McCaig, who founded ABJHI in 2004 with a donation of $10 million. Ann and Bud were married for 21 years and shared a vision to build a world-class health and medical system in Calgary.

Ann is well-known for her commitment to the not-for-profit sector and, in particular, her passion for youth, education and health. She serves as Chair Emeritus of the Calgary Health Trust and the Calgary Stampede Foundation and as Chair of the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC). She is also Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Calgary, a Director of the Gairdner Foundation, and a former Trustee of the $400-million Killam Estate.

Over the past two decades, Ann has led several large capital campaigns for major institutions in Calgary. She was Co-chair of the Alberta Children’s Hospital campaign, helping to raise more than $52 million to build a state-of-the-art pediatric facility in Calgary, and chaired a campaign that raised $9.6 million for AARC.

Ann is a Member of the Order of Canada and has received an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta. She is one of the inaugural recipients of the University of Calgary Education Partnership Award and was recognized by the University of Saskatchewan with an Alumni Humanitarian Award. She has received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Award, the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Award, the Alberta Order of Excellence, the Alberta Centennial Award, the Rotary Integrity Award, the Paul Harris Fellowship Rotary International Award, the YWCA Woman of Distinction Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Award of Exceptional Recognition from Calgary’s Chief of Police. In June 2012, Ann received the Grant MacEwan Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Calgary in honour of her contributions to the community.

As a founding member of ABJHI and Chair of the Board since 2019, Don has played a significant role in establishing the institute as a catalyst for better ways to deliver public health care to Albertans suffering from bone and joint disorders. An orthopaedic surgeon, Don is active in medical practice, teaching and professional service. He specializes in adult joint arthroplasty (repair and replacement of joints) and in general paediatric orthopaedics (treatment of musculoskeletal disorders in children).

Located in Edmonton, he is Alberta Health Services’ Senior Medical Director, Health Outcomes, and prior to that was the Senior Medical Director for AHS’ Bone and Joint Health Strategic Clinical Network. Don is also Assistant Clinical Professor in the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta. He served on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Orthopaedic Association, and is Past-President of the Alberta Orthopaedic Society.

With more than a decade in executive leadership positions in the public and post-secondary sectors, Karen had led and championed complex initiatives, guided organizations through transition and change, and built long-lasting local, national and international relationships rooted in multi-sector engagement. Karen was a key driver in the realization of Edmonton’s Health City, a multi-stakeholder economic development initiative launched in 2017. Over the course of her career, Karen has worked to advance the provincial and national science, research, and innovation agenda and has secured funding for new national programs and major capital projects. Karen has also served as Associate Vice-President (Government & Corporate Relations) for the University of Alberta and was seconded to the Government of Alberta to serve as Assistant Deputy Minister (Operations and Machinery of Government) in Executive Council.

Karen is currently the CEO of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board where she works with the 13 member municipalities that make up the Board to implement the region’s 30 year growth and servicing plans. She is also the Founder of Deep Strategies Inc. Karen serves on the Glenrose Hospital Foundation Board, ST Innovations Business Advisory Board and Covenant Health’s Growth and Innovation Board.

Murray serves as a Director of Williams (WMB.NYSE), Surge Energy (SGY.TSX) and a number of private companies. He is President of Murray Smith & Associates Limited, providing strategic advice to clients in the North American energy sector. He currently serves as chair and patient representative for the Institute for Improved Health Outcomes’ MAP to MOTION Governance Committee. Murray Smith is a past member of the Energy Advisory Board of TD Securities Inc. and the Advisory Board of Hatch, a Canadian based, global engineering firm. Murray was appointed as the first Official Representative of the Province of Alberta to the United States of America in 2005. Murray was an elected Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Canada and served in four Cabinet portfolios Energy, Gaming, Labour and Economic Development over a 12 year period. As Minister of Energy (2001 to 2004), Murray was responsible for gaining global recognition of Alberta’s 176 billion barrels of established oil sands reserves. Before running for elected office in 1993, Murray was an independent businessman, owning and operating a number of Alberta-based energy service companies including drilling fluids, service rigs, oilfield contracting and consulting.

Murray is the recipient of numerous awards, including being named as one of the Top 40 Alumni in the past 40 years at the University of Calgary. Murray was recognized as one of Alberta Venture newsmagazine’s 50 most influential Albertans (2006). Murray was also recognized for his work with First Nations in Alberta and is named “Seven War Bonnets Man”. Murray is a past Director of the Calgary Stampede Board and the TELUS community Giving Board. A graduate of the London Business School’s Senior Executive Program, Murray also holds a B.A. (Economics & Political Science) from the University of Calgary. He is a graduate of Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Saskatchewan.

R.G. (Randy) Goebel is currently professor of Computing Science in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, Associate Vice President (Research & Innovation), and Fellow and co-founder of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). He received the B.Sc. (Computer Science), M.Sc. (Computing Science), and Ph.D. (Computer Science) from the Universities of Regina, Alberta, and British Columbia, respectively. Professor Goebel’s theoretical work on abduction, hypothetical reasoning and belief revision is internationally well known; his recent research is focused on the formalization of visualization and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), especially in applications in legal and medical reasoning. He has worked on optimization, algorithm complexity, systems biology, and natural language processing, and automated reasoning. Randy has previously held faculty appointments at the University of Waterloo, University of Tokyo, Multimedia University (Kuala Lumpur), Hokkaido University (Sapporo), visiting researcher engagements at National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo), DFKI (Germany), and NICTA (now Data61, Australia); is actively involved in collaborative research projects in Canada, Japan, China, and Germany.

Dr. Lauren Beaupre is a physical therapist and epidemiologist who is a professor and Dr. David Magee Endowed Chair in Musculoskeletal Research in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Alberta. She also holds a joint appointment in the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Alberta. Her research interests are in outcome and health services research for people who live with musculoskeletal conditions and are recovering from orthopaedic surgery. Dr. Beaupre leads the Collaborative Orthopaedic Research (CORe) group at the University, which is a multidisciplinary research unit.

Dr. Beaupre has published extensively in the areas of hip fracture recovery and secondary fracture prevention, total joint arthroplasty surgery and rehabilitation, and upper extremity research. She is also interested in Implementation Science Research and has worked closely with the Alberta Bone and Joint Strategic Clinical Network and Alberta Bone and Joint Health Institute to implement and evaluate provincial bone health programs to improve secondary fracture prevention. Dr. Beaupre was the first Canadian and physical therapist to lead the Fragility Fracture Network (FFN) (2022-23). The FFN is an international organization of almost 15,000 members that seek to improve the lives of people experiencing a fragility fracture anywhere in the world, including preventing the next fracture.

Dr. Rick Anderson has recently retired after a long career with many leadership roles in Emergency Medicine, Medical Administration and Medical Professional Affairs. During his career he was an early leader and adopter of performance metrics for Physicians and for monitoring and planning health care delivery models.

His long term interest in the challenges associated with the documentation of, and the associated research with respect to individual patient care clinical outcomes  are what attracted him, when asked to offer his experience to the pursuit of this objective underway at the Institute for Improved Health Outcomes.

Dr. Cheryl Barnabe, MD, MSc FRCPC is a Rheumatology Clinician Scientist and Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. She is the Director for the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health, and a Senior Scientist with Arthritis Research Canada. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Autoimmune Diseases and is the Arthur JE Child Chair in Rheumatology Outcomes Research. She is a proud member of the Otipemisiwak Metis Government. Her research program identifies drivers of rheumatoid arthritis outcomes in Indigenous community members, including environmental exposures and disparities in social determinants of health. She works with communities to identify, co-create, implement and evaluate promising health system interventions to improve access to diagnosis, treatment, and quality of care.

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Tracy J. Wasylak, BN, MSc. (Thesis), CHE, is a Health System Leader with numerous senior leadership roles within multiple provincial Health Delivery Systems. She recently completed a contract as a Senior Policy Advisor with Health Canada. Tracy holds an adjunct assistant professor appointment with the Faculty of Nursing and Community Health Sciences with the Cummings School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. She was the Co-Lead for the ABSPORU 2.0 Learning Health System Team. Tracy is an active collaborator on several health services research teams focusing on health care improvement, Health System Impact, patient engagement and health policy. Tracy received the Order of Merit, Nursing Policy Award, from the Canadian Nurses Association in March 2018. She was the recipient of the 2015 AHS Presidents Excellence Award in the category of Innovation, the 2019 award for Outstanding Achievement in Quality Improvement and in 2023 awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal (Alberta).