Good morning, everyone.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here to speak to you today.
Our documents have not been translated into French, and I apologize, but we are in the process of doing that. For the moment, they are in English only. That is also the case for my presentation.
To start off, this is a bit of a different approach, and I think it certainly fits within the innovative framework.
I'm a naturopathic doctor and the director of research for the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine as well as the executive director of the Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre. We opened in November 2011, almost exactly a year ago today. In fact, tomorrow is our birthday, if you will. We're very much the new kids on the block.
We're aiming to provide complementary medicine in combination with, as a complement to, and ideally integrated with conventional medicine in a community clinic. We're working towards improving communication between complementary practitioners and conventional practitioners so that patients don't feel they're torn between two different worlds when they look at discussing with their conventional practitioners some of the complementary medicine care options they are using.
We know that a large proportion of patients are actually using complementary medicine, particularly people living with cancer. We're looking at anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on which survey of which population of people is being looked at. Typically, in the past, women with breast cancer have been much more likely to use complementary medicine. However, we're seeing that shift to more usage across many different cancer types.
We are looking to conduct research in the area of integrative oncology so that we can demonstrate, assess, and evaluate the potential benefits for patients when they combine complementary medicine with conventional care.
One of the main goals for patients when they come to see us is to control post-surgical healing and some of the side effects associated with some of the conventional therapies, such as chemotherapy and radiation. There are a lot of ways we can help patients. People are using this therapy, and there is evidence to support it.
What we don't have, though, is integration among the systems, and we have a real communications gap. That really needs to change, because patients feel great anxiety and a lot of stress when they try to bridge these two worlds. It's very difficult for them. We're about providing a place where we're not an alternative source of care, but a source of complementary and, ideally, integrative care. We're not there to provide a replacement, by any means. We want to work in conjunction with and help support patients and improve their quality of life.
There's also data that we can potentially extend life as well with this combination.
To give you a better flavour or a better idea of the kind of centre and the kind of care this is, we have a number of different disciplines working together to provide this complementary care. We have five naturopathic doctors and three medical doctors. There's an acupuncturist, a physiotherapist, two counsellors, and a nutritionist. A number of people are working to provide these different types of care for patients who are seeking it. The care doesn't necessarily address the pathology of the disease in the same way a hospital would, with chemotherapy or radiation, but it addresses very important aspects of a person's health that patients feel are incredibly relevant to them.
We are committed to providing this care in a clinical setting that provides safe and effective therapy that does not interact negatively with any of the conventional therapies. This is something that is of prime concern to oncologists in particular, and of course to patients as well. We look to provide therapies that are safely combined and at the right times.
In addition, we want to be doing the research to assess whether or not there is any benefit, and what benefit there is, from that combination, and to do so in a whole-practice setting. So we want to look at, for example, when a patient comes through the care and they're also doing conventional therapy, what additional benefits they accrue from having that complementary therapy. We want to look at outcomes that are patient-relevant outcomes, as well as harder outcomes, like recurrence and mortality. These are, really, the way to demonstrate benefit, to improve communications, and then, potentially, to move into a more integrated health care system that does include complementary medicine.
Governance comes through from the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, which is one of the seven accredited teaching colleges across North America. It's accredited by a board that's certified through the federal government in the United States. The college provides the foundation for us and provides some of the infrastructure, so it gives us the stability and also some of the framework for the research that we've done and we continue to do.
We work with some key partners, including the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, OHRI. I'm an affiliate investigator with the OHRI, and we work with some of the scientists there on some of the research we're doing, which involves both synthesis-type research, which is basically collecting data from the literature and systematic reviews, meta-analyses-type work, and then also in the conduct of clinical trials, which is something we are doing and are committed to doing more of.
We have also worked with the Champlain Regional Cancer Program's Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre, with some people in leadership positions there, who also recognize from surveys with their patients that they are very keen on including complementary medicine within the spectrum of care that they are considering and that they do access, and they want this to be recognized formally.
We've been very well supported by different foundations, in terms of some of the research we're doing. That includes the Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation, and also the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation as well. We've been funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
As part of the integrative oncology whole, if you will, a lot of different people are trying to work together to move the science of this field forward. That includes patient advocates, oncologists, naturopathic doctors, other complementary practitioners, and researchers, who are looking to better evaluate and assess what kind of a model of care is effective.
So the OICC is a new place. There is a great demand from patients. We're seeing that growing very rapidly. We've just expanded our facilities recently, and we see that continuing to grow. What we're looking for is to assess this in the right way through rigorous research and to be able to enable people who are of low-income means to be able to access these services as well, and then to do this in the context of a pilot study, which I think is a good fit because it's really not being done in Canada very much. There is an example in the west, a centre that is doing work in this area, but nothing in eastern Canada. We want to be evaluating, assessing, and documenting benefits and outcomes, and we want to be able to present this and to analyze it.