Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting ACAHO to contribute to this important discussion.
As noted, my name is Chris Power. I'm the president and CEO of Capital District Health Authority in Halifax and chair of the ACAHO board. I began my health care journey as a nurse.
I'm delighted to share the time allotted here today with my colleague, Dr. Christopher Paige, vice-president of health research at the University Health Network in Toronto.
ACAHO is the national voice of Canada's academic health care organizations; that is, the country's research hospitals, academic provincial and regional health authorities, and their research institutes. You may know our organizations for the patient care services they provide to you, your families, friends, neighbours, and communities. However, these organizations are also national resources and economic engines. They are responsible for hundreds of world firsts, innovative technologies and spin-off companies, lists of which we have provided to you in the package containing our brief.
For example, in my own region, one of our orthopedic surgeons, Dr. Michael Dunbar, provided the scientific basis for Halifax Biomedical, which makes tiny beads that allow for precise tracking of any relative movement in bones during surgery long before any other approach can.
One of our anesthesiologists, Dr. Michael Schmidt, helped establish DMF Medical Incorporated, a spin-off company that is now investigating several innovative approaches to protect against cognitive declines after surgery in the elderly.
Dr. Orlando Hung and industrial collaborators are developing inexpensive medical devices that allow for the safer placement of breathing tubes and that provide feedback on the flow of anesthesia medication in the veins.
With these and other examples in mind, we will propose to you that while our country's academic health care organizations have impressive track records, opportunities within our organizations remain unexploited. In our view, what we need in Canada is a national framework or mechanism that allows for the systematic identification of innovations from a publicly funded health care sector that has commercialization potentials; incents commercialization through adequate infrastructure support; and enables the strategic procurement of our own innovations to help generate revenues, bend the cost curve, and spread patient care solutions more broadly.
With this, I would like to invite Dr. Paige, vice-president of research at the University Health Network, to continue our remarks.