The federal government wants Canadians to compete more vigorously in the international commercialization of health products and processes.
Federal Minister of Industry Tony Clement wants Western to help Canada compete internationally in the health care field. The federal government will invest $5 million to create the Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership. President Paul Davenport looks on during the Monday announcement.
To support that drive, Federal Minister of Industry Tony Clement unveiled a $5 million investment to create the new Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership at The University of Western Ontario.
The centre, to be housed at the Richard Ivey School of Business, will bring together expertise from business, health sciences and medicine to develop specialized talent and commercialize health innovations that benefit health care providers and patients.
With the health of the economy top-of-mind, Clement says the promotion of science and technology in Canada is essential to an economic recovery.
As part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, the federal government has prioritized investing in science and technology to build a knowledge-based economy, says Clement.
“One of the key areas that most directly impacts quality of life and where Canada, indeed I know, has the potential to become more competitively globally, of course, is health innovation.
“For our health care system to be sustainable, Canadian health care must be leading-edge. We must continue to pursue innovation; we must adapt technologies; we must harness new management techniques and processes.”
Commercialization of health care innovations will stimulate the economy through the development of a highly skilled workforce and creation of new business opportunities, he says.
The federal investment will seed the centre’s start-up, including establishment of a Chair of Health Innovation, management and administrative expenses, and the cost of health care demonstration projects over the next five years.
Clement says health-care professionals need more business training, particularly those involved in innovation. In its first year, it is expected 20-25 health-sector personnel will take part in the centre’s specialized training.
“We’ve got some excellent managers that are starting to have this kind of training, but we need more,” he says. “You may know a lot about your product or a lot about science, but we are trying to marry that with knowledge about the marketplace.”
“This Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership will become an internationally recognized research centre,” Clement says. “It will be a global leader in identifying, assessing and commercializing innovative technologies, innovative systems and processes for Canada’s health-care system.”
President Paul Davenport says the announcement will have national and international implications for the health-care sector.
The new centre will “become a place where students want to come – have to come – to be leaders in the field of health care innovation,” he says.
The centre was the vision of Kellie Leitch, chair, chief of Pediatric Surgery at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and cross-appointed as director of the Health Sector MBA at Ivey, and Ivey dean Carol Stephenson, who collaborated to build a partnership between Schulich, Ivey and London Health Sciences Centre, to also include government and industry partners.
Leitch will take on the role of executive director for the new centre.
Stephenson feels the centre will tackle some business-related issues plaguing Canada’s health care system, such as long hospital wait times, to make processes more efficient.
“We are not training doctors here or anything, but if we can improve the scheduling or some of the processes around clinics, then that frees up doctors and other people to provide more health care as opposed to (doing) the process work that sometimes bogs things down,” she says.
The Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership will be created, pending Treasury Board approval. This is part of the government’s national Science & Technology Strategy, Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage.