A work placement with Aya Health Technologies positions the Interaction Design student at the cutting-edge of design aimed at improving Canadian healthcare.
A new internship puts fourth-year Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU) Interaction Design student Emily Qiang squarely at the intersection of clinical care, data sovereignty and healthcare accessibility.
Emily is bringing her classroom learning to bear as part of Aya Health Technologies, a Vancouver-based company which develops artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to improve healthcare quality and health outcomes.
“I’ve been applying all the skills I learn during my internship to my practice at ECU, and vice versa,” says Emily, whose capstone project focuses on healthcare accessibility by helping clinicians and patients communicate more effectively.
“Before this internship, I hadn’t done much interviewing or hosting workshops with people who weren’t my peers. It’s a completely separate skillset, and working with Aya Health has helped me understand how to work productively with someone who isn’t a designer. I feel like that skill is going to be very applicable as I enter the workforce.”
Aya Health Technologies has developed several AI tools for clinical use, including flagship product Autochart.ai Health Assistant, an AI scribe that generates clinical outputs based on dictations or conversations between health professionals and their patients or clients. During a 2025 internship facilitated by the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship’s Design for Startups program, Emily worked closely with the Autochart.ai team to develop UX (user experience) design for the product as well as walk the team through the design-thinking process.
This latest internship will see Emily work on a broader suite of Aya Health Technologies products, including the Autochart.ai Voice Assistant, the Autochart.ai Patient Scribe and the Aya Health Asynchronous Care Platform.
Through the generous support of Mitacs and its Business Strategy Internship program, ECU can offer students like Emily meaningful industry experiences that prepare them for professional practice and expand the impact of their research and design knowledge.
CARE, ACCESSIBILITY + DATA SOVEREIGNTY
Aya Health Technologies cofounder and Chief Innovation Officer, Dr. Ali Okhowat, is a physician, bioethicist and co-director of the Enhanced Skills Program in Global Health in the UBC Faculty of Medicine. He says Autochart.ai tools were explicitly designed to target some of the most challenging pain points in clinical care.
For instance, a recent report from the Canadian Medical Association indicates Canadian doctors lose more than 20 million hours each year to unnecessary paperwork — hours that are also lost to patients who often wait weeks or months to see specialists.
“Across the country, our healthcare workers are overburdened,” Dr. Okhowat says. “The promise of these tools is that they enable those humans to do the things they’ve been trained to do — to unlock those capabilities amongst healthcare teams.”
Additionally, many patients struggle to articulate the values by which they’d like their care to proceed. This challenge can be especially consequential for people in palliative care or experiencing life-changing medical conditions.
“Our tools also include accessibility features to ensure patients understand their treatments and can advocate for themselves effectively,” Dr. Okhowat says.
Meanwhile, many of the most widely used technological solutions are developed in the U.S., raising privacy — not to mention political — concerns regarding the ways sensitive data might be collected, stored and handled.
Dr. Okhowat notes Aya Health Technologies has also been validated via acceptance into competitive pre-qualified vendor programs, such as the Canada Health Infoway National AI Scribe Program, Supply Ontario Artificial Intelligent Solutions AI Scribe program, and the BC AI Scribe Program.
“We are a Canadian company which meets national standards for security and clinical practice, meaning we offer critical assurances regarding both technological resilience and the importance of simply knowing where your data is accessed and stored.”
He adds that support from organizations like Mitacs and programs like Design for Startups is crucial for keeping Canadian companies competitive in rapidly evolving sectors such as healthcare technology.
THE PROMISE + POTENTIAL OF DESIGN
Dr. Okhowat says Emily not only helped create an accessible and user-friendly interface for Autochart.ai Health Assistant, she also helped shape the team’s approach to public engagement through design thinking.
“Before Emily came on, we had a lot of great but disparate ideas. Emily helped us orient and clarify our thinking,” he says.
“If you’re an engineer or clinician running a company, it’s easy to get stuck in your own domain. The promise and potential of design is that it’s integrative. Emily helped bring our remote team together and communicate insights with one another. Most importantly, she helped us understand how to build our tools to better support and reflect the needs and hopes of our users.”
ECU Industry Liaison Alan Goldman notes the internship both supports and draws upon the work students like Emily do at ECU.
“Emily’s internship with Aya Health closely aligns with the core learning outcomes of the Interaction Design program,” he says. “In this role, she applies human-centred design principles, user research, systems thinking and iterative prototyping while helping guide the team through a structured design-thinking process within a real-world product development environment.”
SERVICE, ACCESSIBILITY, CARE
In addition to providing an applied context for Emily’s degree studies that aligns with her focus on healthcare accessibility, her internship also showed her how a designer exists within a company’s ecosystem and contributes collaboratively toward the realization of a product.
“Before I started working on Autochart.ai, I had no idea what it would be like to work with a group of developers,” she says.
“Working with Dr. Okhowat and his team, I could see my designs being implemented in real time and bounce ideas back and forth between teams to see what works and is the most feasible. Hearing inputs from people with different specializations was incredibly valuable and made for a great learning experience. It was especially rewarding because service is so important to me, and this project is so much about accessibility and care.”
Look for Emily’s project, Listen, in The Show, ECU’s graduating student exhibition, in May 2026.
More About Interaction Design at ECU
Interactivity is everywhere—from apps and websites to physical devices, games and service systems. You’ll gain hands-on experience designing digital and tangible media through sketching, prototyping and testing.
ECU’s interdisciplinary Interaction Design program blends technical skills, critical inquiry and human-centred research while allowing you to take courses in Communication Design, Industrial Design, Animation and New Media + Sound Art.
Led by expert practitioners, this program prepares you to navigate the evolving fields of UX, interaction design and emerging technologies.
Visit our website to learn more.
Want more stories like this one delivered twice a month to your inbox?
Subscribe to our FREE Emix newsletter today!