Onika Drabble Photo by Ryan Wilson IWK
Today we join organizations around the world in celebrating International Women in Engineering Day (INWED), a time to recognize the contributions of women helping shape the future through innovation, problem-solving and leadership.
At IWK Health, more than three-quarters of our Process & System Improvement team are women, demonstrating the important role women engineers and improvement professionals play in advancing healthcare.
Onika Drabble joined IWK Health as an Industrial Engineering student in 2023. During her placement, she completed an award-winning design project in Precision Medicine, supporting the Clinical Genomics Lab with simulation modelling that helped increase internal testing capacity and reduce reliance on outsourced tests. Since joining the team full-time in 2024, Onika has continued to drive improvement initiatives across Pediatric Medicine, the Outpatient Blood Clinic and Newborn Screening, while also co-leading the implementation of a Visual Management System across the organization. This year, she presented her Precision Medicine work at the IWK Quality Summit.
“Working in healthcare offers engineers the opportunity to solve problems that have incredible impacts on the lives of patients, families, and healthcare staff,” says Onika. “The people you serve and support are walking in the halls beside you, being born in the units on floors above you, and undergoing treatment in the clinics you walk by each day. You are immersed in your impact. It is one of the most rewarding occupations you can have as an engineer in my opinion.”
While progress continues, women remain underrepresented in engineering, accounting for just 21 per cent of newly licensed engineers in Canada and 15 per cent of engineering professionals. By celebrating role models like Onika, we hope to inspire the next generation to see engineering as a rewarding and impactful career path, like this year’s engineering students Eve Daniels, Elsie Gillis and Hadley Bent.
“Engineering is not just numbers, charts, and projects,” says Onika. “It is a profession that brings people together who want to make the world a better place. It is about being able to talk with people, care about those you serve, and seek to understand something at its core. It is solving puzzle after puzzle in order to make something safer, more efficient, effective, or all of the above. Engineering is a way of thinking- I have yet to meet a young woman who does not have the “engineer” in them!”
Thank you to Onika and all women in engineering that are helping improve care, outcomes and experiences for patients and families every day.
#INWED2026 #WomenInEngineering #FutureEngineers