Jennifer Zelmer is the first CEO of Healthcare Excellence Canada, a new organization formed in 2020 following the merger of the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement (CFHI) and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI). The objective of Healthcare Excellence Canada is to improve the safety, quality, and coordination of healthcare in partnership with patients. Its longstanding commitment to improving the quality and safety of care, together with its expertise in expanding and scaling innovations to yield better results, will help shape the organization—which now has more capacity to improve healthcare services for everyone across Canada. Before assuming her current role, Ms. Zelmer had been CEO of the CFHI since September 2018. She has been a researcher at the C.D. Howe Institute for several years. She works as an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria and sits on multiple healthcare-related boards and advisory committees.

While president of Azimuth Health Group, Ms. Zelmer lent her strategic advice to officials seeking to advance health and healthcare services locally, nationally, and internationally. Before that time, she held management roles with Canada Health Infoway, the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation, and the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Ms. Zelmer sat on the first national steering committee for the Safer Healthcare Now! campaign, formed by the CPSI in 2004, while she was at the CIHI. She has also sat on the CPSI’s former advisory committee on health systems innovation and, more recently, on the steering committee of the National Patient Safety Consortium, as part of her work at Canada Health Infoway.

Ms. Zelmer holds a doctorate and a master’s degree in economics from McMaster University as well as a bachelor’s degree in health information science from the University of Victoria.