Healthcare's positive future
This month, the Ottawa Business Journal features a Foundation-sponsored story on The Ottawa Hospital's strategic vision to reshape the future of healthcare. In it, President and CEO Cameron Love speaks to the challenges facing our healthcare system and the path we are taking to address them. The centrepiece is the construction of our new hospital – a state-of-the-art health and research campus to replace the aging Civic. In turn, it serves as a catalyst for integrating further capacity, often in novel ways, across the healthcare system. Love explains: “You need health system infrastructure based on integrated care. The focus is on building a comprehensive health system, rather than just hospitals.”
Love emphasizes the pace of change enabled by research, technology, and new procedures. Whereas 30 years ago “patients were admitted to hospital for procedures and treatments over the course of days… now, they are often treated and sent home with a 15-30 minute procedure.” Leveraging this through “community-based infrastructure, patients can be supported for many ailments in community-based settings ensuring hospitals have capacity to treat the most acutely ill. You build more long-term and transitional care capacity, primary care capacity, surgical clinics and ambulatory centres in the community while making sure you’ve got state-of-the-art infrastructure at our hospital for critical programs like trauma and neurosurgery. We need to create capacity for the hospital programs to be effective and efficient.”
Research and innovation are central to this pace of change, and Love emphasizes the importance of TOH’s research leadership to the strategic plan and vision. It also serves as an economic driver, amplified through a wealth of enabling partnerships with academia, industry, and government.
To anyone despairing of our healthcare system, this article provides a credible answer for a bright and positive healthcare future for our region.
How timely is that? We are creating tomorrow.
New inhaled vaccine shows promise
A News Release from the University of Ottawa, and a research paper published in Nature Communications, highlights an inhaled COVID-19 vaccine, developed through the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Hub (CP2H), which has shown promising results in its first human trial. Delivered as a mist directly into the lungs, the vaccine aims to build stronger frontline immunity than traditional injections. The Phase 1 study, involving 36 healthy adults, was led by McMaster University in partnership with The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa. Researchers confirmed the vaccine is safe and triggers a targeted immune response in the respiratory system.
Fiona Smaill, professor emerita in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster, explains that “current COVID-19 vaccines have generally not provided protection against breakthrough infections. … This trial has made a strong case for inhaled vaccines to become a key tool in the prevention of future outbreaks and pandemics.”
Matthew Miller, who co-leads CP2H with The Ottawa Hospital’s Dr. John Bell, “says that the success of the inhaled vaccine program exemplifies how interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration, coupled with sustained investment in research infrastructure, can catalyze the development of important new health solutions.” CP2H brings together top minds and resources from The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, University of Ottawa, and McMaster University and combines their expertise in areas like immunology, clinical research, and vaccine manufacturing.
Dr. Shawn Aaron: vaping is no road to quitting
CTV National News spoke with The Ottawa Hospital’s Dr. Shawn Aaron following the release of new guidelines from the Canadian Task Force on Preventative Health Care. The guidelines no longer recommend vaping as a means of smoking cessation. Dr. Aaron highlighted concerns around vaping, including our lack of understanding of the long-term effects, and the persistence of addiction with continued nicotine use through vaping. Dr. Aaron recommended a combination of approaches to help individuals quit, including patches, inhalers, medications and counselling. He also speaks to the dangers of smoking – enough to make any smoker want to quit!
Vital Links – 60,000 subscribers can’t be wrong!
Vital Links, our Foundation e-newsletter, has a circulation of 60,000 subscribers and an incredible 60% Open Rate. Twice a month, it is packed with highlights about The Ottawa Hospital that inspire our donors to support our mission and vision. If you aren’t a subscriber, you should be!
If you need to be convinced, our latest edition is sure to do it.
And to sign-up: CLICK HERE!
The ABC of better tomorrows for young cancer patients
Yesterday, The Ottawa Citizen featured our story detailing the particulars of the Active Breathing Co-ordinator (ABC), the difference that it makes in the lives of children who have cancer, and the team that works to implement this technology - including Kim Charbonneau, who I covered in last week’s edition of my Weekly.
As featured in my Weekly on August 7th, TOH is the regional provider of childhood cancer radiation therapy. The ABC allows clinicians to deliver radiation with extraordinary accuracy, and reduce harm to nearby organs like the heart and lungs. This is especially important for children and adolescents, whose bodies are still growing and vulnerable to long-term side effects.
This story shows how TOH partners alongside CHEO in caring for children and youth in our region, and provides another great inspiration to support our hospital through the Campaign to Create Tomorrow.