Research Assistant II, GEMINI

GEMINI ( GEMINI Medicine ) is a “made in Ontario” data platform and Canada’s largest hospital clinical data research network. GEMINI has collected data on more than 2.4 million hospital admissions, representing over 20 billion data points, from more than 35 hospitals across all regions of Ontario. These hospitals collectively care for over 65% of Ontarians, enabling large scale research on quality of care and patient outcomes.

GEMINI has recently launched a new initiative, VITAL: real time health data for Trials, Artificial Intelligence and a Learning Health System (VITAL), which aims to develop a near real time hospital data platform capable of collecting hospital data every 24 hours across Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. However, structured coded datasets critical to healthcare analytics, such as ICD-10-CA diagnosis codes and CCI procedure codes, are not available within 24 hours because they are manually coded after discharge, often taking several months to complete.

To address this challenge, GEMINI has launched a new project called ICD Assist, which focuses on developing a large language model (LLM) pipeline capable of transforming discharge summaries into preliminary ICD-10-CA codes. This will enable early healthcare analytics before fully coded administrative datasets become available. While the initial use case is to support earlier analytics within VITAL, the tool also has the potential to evolve into an assisted coding tool in the near future. The project is not intended to replace human coders, but rather to improve coding efficiency and support the coding workflow.

The GEMINI team is currently seeking a Research Assistant II to join the ICD Assist project team, led by a group of Senior Data Scientists. To develop and evaluate this tool effectively, GEMINI requires accurately annotated discharge summaries to support model training, optimization, and validation. The successful candidate will play a key role in creating high quality annotated datasets using GEMINI discharge summaries.

To learn more about this initiative, the GEMINI team presented ICD Assist during the Canadian Health Information Management Association (CHIMA) speaker series on March 18, 2026, in a session titled “Ask Me Anything: Harnessing Clinical Data for AI, Trials and a Learning Health System.”

This is a temporary casual appointment with an initial contract term of 3 months. Weekly hours are flexible and may range from 15 hours to 37.5 hours per week. This position is fully remote.

Duties And Responsibilities

Research Activities (90%)

Participate in inter-annotator agreement exercises with other research assistants to align annotation rules

Review and annotate discharge summaries using ICD-10-CA coding guidelines

Annotate additional meta data (such as experiencer, temporality) required for project development and evaluation

Identify, investigate, and report data quality issues with the discharge summaries

Maintain confidentiality and data privacy following proper data handling standards

Administrative Support (10%)

Communicate with Senior Data Scientists and fellow research assistants through Slack, email, and virtual meetings regarding annotation progress, challenges, and clarifications

Update annotations based on team feedback or clarifications

Qualifications

Extensive knowledge of Canadian Coding Standards and the ICD-10CA/CCI classification systems, with practical experience in coding and abstracting in a Canadian acute care hospital environment

Certified Health Information Management (CHIM) professional preferred

Strong clinical knowledge and experience reviewing patient charts

Excellent verbal and written communication skills

Excellent organizational and time management skills

Strong attention to detail and demonstrated ability to learn new skills quickly

Strong problem identification and problem-solving skills

Working knowledge of Microsoft Office and Google Workspace applications

Ability to work independently and prioritize workload in a fast-paced environment

Ability to handle confidential information with discretion and maintain data privacy

Ability to exercise sound judgment when assessing difficult situations

Unity Health Toronto is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive organization. We strive to provide a recruitment process that is barrier-free and in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and the Ontario Human Rights Code. We understand that you may require an accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process. When you are contacted, please inform the Talent Acquisition Specialist and we will work with you to meet your accommodation needs. We want to emphasize that all accommodation requests are handled with the utmost confidentiality, respecting your privacy and dignity.