By: Allison Currie
In the complex and ever evolving healthcare landscape, innovation drives the kind of solutions that improve the system for both patients and healthcare providers.
The Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub has emerged as a leader of creativity and transformation, collaborating with the brightest minds not just at home, but further abroad as well.
"Because we are increasingly needing to think outside of the box, the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub navigates healthcare challenges with a distinctively creative lens”, says Dr. Gail Tomblin Murphy, Vice-President Research, Innovation & Discovery and Innovation Partnerships at Nova Scotia Health. “The Health Innovation Hub has embraced this spirit of ingenuity, raising the bar in creating an environment where researchers, innovators and other partners can work quickly and collaboratively with their peers locally and globally to turn ideas into solutions.”
Located in downtown Halifax, the Health Innovation Hub is part of Nova Scotia Health and is the first of its kind in Atlantic Canada. The team behind the physical space falls within the Research, Innovation & Discovery branch of Nova Scotia Health, tasked with the development of new treatments, technologies and solutions to achieve excellence in health, ensuring that Nova Scotia leads in world class healthcare.
It’s a responsibility not taken lightly.
Through strategic partnerships with patients and families, clinicians, industry, health care foundations, governments and academic partners, we are working to transform the provincial healthcare system through the best available evidence and well-researched solutions.
These partnerships are at the heart of everything we do. In fact, our founding partners are the cornerstones of the work we have done thus far. Our founding partners are: Varian, Sobeys, Medavie, Medtronic, Accenture, EY, QEII Foundation, Virtual Hallway, NovaResp, MIMOSA Diagnostics and Mindsea. More recent partners include Microsoft, IBM and Ring Rescue.
Over the last year, the work facilitated through the Health Innovation Hub has led to:
- Creation of the Oncology Transformation Project (OTP), which aims to reduce treatment wait times and enhance survival rates by modernizing cancer care delivery, integrating key oncology information systems in real time.
- The acquisition of three Ethos radiotherapy systems with Hypersight imaging solution through a partnership with Varian. This technology will allow us to continue to provide the best possible cancer care for Nova Scotians.
- Establishment of a center of excellence in surgical robotics, boasting the highest number of surgical robots nationwide in a single health authority and pioneering the adoption of these innovative technologies. Over 1600 successful cases have been performed.
- Mobile Primary Care clinics that help ensure that patients across the province have increased access to primary clinic care in their communities, at times when it is most needed.
- Pharmacy walk-in clinics that enable pharmacists and nurse practitioners to provide primary care in partnership with Sobeys-owned Lawtons pharmacies, reducing the demand on our Emergency Departments and improving access to care for Nova Scotians.
- YourHealthNS, a one-stop shop to book services, navigate care and find information easier and faster. Using the YourHealthNS app, you can search for health services nearest you, book blood tests, x-rays, flu shots and COVID-19 vaccine appointments, view your own health records and more.
- Noona, an online app that empowers cancer care patients in Nova Scotia to take a more active role in their treatment journey.
- A partnership with Mitacs that led its largest-ever health authority grant. This $1.4 million grant supports industrial engineering interns and post-doctoral fellows as they help to strengthen healthcare processes.
- Facilitation and ongoing development of Virtual Hallway, a platform designed by doctors, for doctors, with the goal of creating a collaborative community of healthcare providers, enabling the swift exchange of clinical knowledge and in turn, quicker patient care.
- The Care Coordination Centre (C3), a first province-wide deployment of a command centre and creation of a team dedicated to facilitating patient access and flow throughout the health system in real time.
- NovaStudies Connects, created to accelerate the recruitment of participants to new clinical research across the province, giving patients unprecedented access to cutting-edge treatments. It can also be found on the YourHealthNS app.
There are also over 500 clinical research professionals and physicians supporting more than 1500 active studies alongside 100+ affiliate scientists across the province, all working to improve patient outcomes and care in areas such as neurology, cardiology, cancer care and infectious diseases.
Another driving force behind this momentum are our three Innovators in Residence (Dr. Karen Cross, Dr. Amanda Caissie, Dr. Michael Dunbar) working directly with the Health Innovation Hub, who add their expertise, provide innovation thought leadership, and champion clinical implementations of new technologies, services and solutions within the healthcare system.
For example, Dr. Amanda Caissie is focused on digital oncology, patient engagement and artificial intelligence that will improve the patient journey.
“My collaborative role as Nova Scotia Health’s Innovator in Residence for digital health solutions has led to cancer care program initiatives such as the Oncology Transformation Project and the Multi-disciplinary Oncology Project that can be used to drive the vision of Nova Scotia Health as a data and artificial intelligence organization of excellence,” says Dr. Caissie.
While the journey to improving health care is never really done, the cutting-edge work facilitated by the Health Innovation Hub, and the Research, Innovation & Discovery community across the province, is helping to ensure that everyone in Nova Scotia has faster access to the right care at the right time and promises to propel our healthcare system into a stronger, brighter future.
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