Health Committee on May 2nd, 2013

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

That's a good point you make. We always tend to look at major centres of excellence in cities and tertiary centres tied to universities, and in some instances we may need to look at centres of excellence in rural areas as well. I don't know if that's something that you're thinking of, Mr. Lee, so that we don't only look at these centres of excellence, especially in rare diseases, being in universities or—

[Dr. Durhane Wong-Rieger]

Many of these are in fact virtual centres. If I look, for instance, at the hematological and rare blood disorder centre, while it's housed in Spain as one hub, it is fact a virtual centre. The collaboration in that case is from right across Europe. So there isn't actually a bricks and mortar site specialized just for that. They're different, special areas. Some testing, some diagnosis, some research is done at different sites, but they collaborate virtually. So it makes a rural site very feasible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

We're virtually out of time.

I just want to thank both of our guests.

Dr. Wong-Rieger, all of your comments were extremely insightful, as were Mr. Lee's. This is a very important topic because it's such a small population. So the committee wanted to hear from you both.

Your idea about innovation and doing it virtually across the country.... I mean, we're in the day now of the Internet and things like that, which can assist us.

So thank you very much.

[Dr. Durhane Wong-Rieger]

Thank you so very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

The committee is dismissed.