This morning Canada Life announced it has selected Montreal’s Dialogue Technologies to supply it with a virtual health care solution for its plan members. Canada Life becomes the first insurer in the country to make virtual health care a standard benefit for employers with Canada Life group benefits plans, with up to 400 plan members. This could potentially apply to over 1 million Canadians.

“As demand for virtual health care continues to grow, working with Canada Life to integrate Dialogue as a standard benefit is an important step towards improving access to quality care for all Canadians,” says Cherif Habib, CEO of Dialogue. “Since its foundation, Dialogue has set the bar around safety and security standards, an outstanding user experience and high member utilization. Soon, more than one million people will have access to our platform, and we feel honoured to serve even more Canadians every day.”

This initiative will take effect over the summer, at which time eligibles employees and their dependants will have access to Dialogue’s fully-bilingual virtual health care platform, available through a mobile app or web browser. These services will be accessible from anywhere in Canada, 24/7, saving people hours of time typically spent waiting for in-person, non-urgent care.

Beneficiaries will be able to chat live with a registered nurse or see a physician via secure video consultation for various health and medical issues, whether to diagnose a wide variety of conditions, provide medical advice, write a prescription or make a referral to a specialist when it is medically indicated. The service is expected to help employers keep their employees happy, healthy, and performing up to their highest potential.

“We are always open to smart collaborations that help support the financial, physical and mental well-being of Canadians, and our relationship with Dialogue is a great example of this,” says Ryan Weiss, Vice-President Product & Experience, Group Customer, Canada Life. “Together we’ve developed a streamlined, proprietary virtual health care solution that will give more than one million Canadians easier access to high-quality health care.”