Madam Chair, to respond to that, during the Society of Nuclear Medicine meeting in Toronto, I convened a broadly representative meeting. There were members of the two Canadian societies, the European Association of Nuclear Medicine, and the British Nuclear Medicine Society. There was a member of the Australian community there, and obviously my colleagues at the Society of Nuclear Medicine. We really discussed impact across the world. We looked at what was happening throughout Europe, what was happening in the U.K., and what was happening in the United States.
I think what is encouraging is that a number of the initiatives that we have adopted through the ad hoc working group are those that are currently being adopted in the other countries or that they will now take back and start working on. Certainly, we had conversations around information for patients, conversations around how best to utilize the generator to ensure there was the maximum number of patients coming out of each individual generator, and conversations on how best to use alternative tests.
I do believe the CIHR initiative is an important one. My belief, from talking to my colleagues in the radiopharmaceutical community, is that we can probably, with this grant, find two alternative radiopharmaceuticals that can be brought into the clinic, probably within a year, to replace technetium products. I will remind you that technetium is still needed; not all tests can be done with PET. So any increase in PET services that we can provide to our patients, if you like, frees up technetium for other tests.
I believe there are a number of initiatives in place that are remarkably concordant around the world. I have to say that I think the ad hoc working group has done a remarkably effective job in doing that, and it's been a pleasure working with Dr. Urbain on that group to ensure that we really are leading the way. This meeting was interesting. I think there's no doubt that the initiatives we have put in place in Canada have enabled us to avoid some of the problems that are being faced in other countries that haven't been quite so proactive.