Thank you Madam Chair.
Medicine is evolving incredibly rapidly. The future of medicine is a world where doctors use their smart phone instead of a stethoscope to examine a patient’s heart rate, a world where novel biomarkers will be used as part of early detection systems for physicians to better treat rejection of organ transplants, a world where an electronic nose is able to detect tuberculosis immediately and non-invasively from the patient’s breath in order to replace testing with sputum, a world where a surgeon from Toronto can perform surgery remotely on a patient in Yellowknife.
All these examples have the common attribute of representing new opportunities for improving the quality, the accessibility, and the safety of health care. That is what emerging technologies are all about, innovation. The future of health care in Canada lies in our ability to innovate. This means we must think differently, be bold, and be prepared to engage partners not traditionally associated with the health sector.
In other words, this means daring to support ambitious and groundbreaking projects that involve researchers from various disciplines, including biology, of course, but also physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science and engineering. This means promoting co-operation and opening up to the international scene.
CIHR has been working more and more with its federal partners, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the National Research Council of Canada and Genome Canada, with a view to supporting research in this cutting-edge area of technology where various disciplines meet.
One of our initiatives is the advancing technology innovation through discovery program. This program allows researchers to apply new genomics technologies to identify the genetic causes of childhood diseases.
I am pleased to inform this committee that, in terms of emerging technologies, Canadian researchers are leading the way in many fields. In September, the Council of Canadian Academies released its assessment of science and technology performance in Canada and confirmed this. In the field of psychology and cognitive sciences, for example, Canada has both an extremely high output, with twice the volume of publications one would expect based on our population, and the fifth highest impact in the world.
In terms of nanosciences and nanotechnology, the assessment noted that Canada is growing the fastest in the world. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research are directly supporting the development of emerging technologies in a wide range of research areas. These include the development of new tools and applications in fields as varied as robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, regenerative medicine, and medical devices, but they also include innovations in the field of health care delivery, such as e-health and telemedicine, to name only a few.
Since 2006, CIHR has funded over 200 projects related to robotics, nanotechnology and the development of applications and medical devices. Those investments represent more than $200 million.
Maurice Ptito form the University of Montreal is a concrete example. With the support of CIHR, Dr. Ptito developed a sensory substitution device that could potentially help blind people with navigation. This tongue display unit retransmits visual information through a camera; the pixels are translated by the tongue. Results show that not only is the information perceived by the tongue unit through the camera sent to the brain, but also that this information is decoded in the brain with sufficient accuracy to enable the person to develop strategies in order to avoid obstacles and to move adequately.
Another fascinating example of futuristic brain machine interface is the work carried out at the incubator of Ryerson University by two young biomedical engineers who, in addition to developing such products as artificial lungs and assistive walking tools for paraplegics, have developed an artificial muscle-operated arm. This experimental device allows one to control an artificial limb just by thinking about it, a little bit as we normally do when thinking about moving a limb. It offers a greater range of movement than traditional prostheses and does not require the amputee to undergo invasive surgery. It is also easy to use and is relatively inexpensive to make.
Not only have these young researchers-entrepreneurs pushed the limits of the application of cybernetics to health, they have also made it a commercial success by creating a start-up, Bionik Laboratories, which has already attracted interest from major hospitals in the U.S. and Canada. The federal government has an important role to play in assisting companies like this one with the uptake of research activities and with ensuring that their successes are brought to market.
Other areas that hold great promise for new advances in helping those living with incurable diseases are genomics and stem cell research. Already, genome sequencing is changing the way we treat and prevent disease. For instance, thanks to early funding through CIHR's regional partnerships program, Dr. Patrick Parfrey and his colleagues from Memorial University in Newfoundland have made substantial strides in the research that led to the discovery of the gene responsible for young Newfoundland men falling dead suddenly from heart failure. Now, a simple blood test can reveal whether or not a person carries the fateful genetic mutation. Those identified with the gene have defibrillators implanted near the collarbone, with the result that Newfoundland’s sudden death syndrome has virtually disappeared. This example illustrates why CIHR and Genome Canada have launched a major strategic partnership on personalized medicine.
It is often said that the brain is the last frontier. Unravelling the mysteries of the brain so as to offer hope and cures for patients suffering from neurological and mental health disorders is another of CIHR’s major thrusts. Brain research is one of the areas in which we can hope to gain most from emerging technologies, in fields ranging from epigenetics to brain imaging.
Take, for example, the work of Dr. Antoine Adamantidis, who is the Canada research chair in neural circuits and optogenetics at the Douglas Hospital at McGill University. Dr. Adamantidis is studying the brain structures involved in the behaviour and psychological state of sleep and wakefulness. He has pioneered the use of optogenetics, which has opened new perspectives and unprecedented experimental strategies to probe the nerve circuits that control wakefulness. His research will help identify new treatments for illnesses associated with sleep disturbances, including depression, schizophrenia, and cognitive-related disorders.
Madam Chair, I wouldn’t want this committee to feel that the emerging technologies projects supported by CIHR are only about new tools, new gadgets, and new devices. They are also about developing new business models, integrating services in different settings, and scaling up successful initiatives into new models of care and services.
This is reflected in projects like that of Dr. Mikiko Terashima from Dalhousie University, whose research initiative seeks to track the locations of all of Nova Scotia's ambulances by use of global positioning systems. The goal is to find out what happens to overall ambulance services when there is overcrowding in hospital emergency departments. Researchers hope to use findings from the project to improve emergency services across the province.
As you can see, Madam Chair, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research are supporting leading edge research endeavours that are critical to ensuring the best health care and health outcomes for Canadians. In supporting these endeavours, CIHR and its partners from the public and private sectors remain focused on the principles of research excellence, research integrity, and patient safety. These are the gold standards for supporting the best ideas and the brightest minds and maintaining Canada’s competitiveness in our knowledge-based economy.
Thank you.