Dr. Shivani Goyal (B.Eng, MASc, PhD) is a biomedical engineer and digital health innovator who is working to revolutionize the way we study, manage, and care for diabetes.

Dr. Goyal is an Associate Director at eHealth Innovation at the University Health Network (UHN) and Assistant Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto. Her thesis focused on the design and evaluation of digital platforms for the self-management of diabetes. She also holds a Masters in Biomedical Engineering from Université de Montréal, and a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering from Concordia, with a specialization in aerospace engineering.

Dr. Goyal’s devotion to diabetes research stems from personal experience, seeing both her maternal grandmother and her mother suffer from major health issues associated with diabetes. As a result, she is a passionate advocate for patient engagement in diabetes research. Her work specializes in developing consumer-focused digital solutions that enable patients to drive their own care. Dr. Goyal is the co-founder of bant, a mobile app designed to help adolescents with diabetes self-management, and Connect1d, Canada’s first patient-led registry for people living with type 1 diabetes. Using these digital platforms, she is transforming traditional models of research to include the voices of people living with diabetes. By elevating the patient’s role in research design, she aims to not only accelerate progress in clinical trials but to, “revolutionize the whole research engine.”

— Written by Nicole Revie