Bite-sized health investments a worthy use of innovation dollars

As the president of a non-profit association working hard to improve the quality of cardiovascular patient care, the Trudeau government’s recent launch of its $950-million supercluster initiative has me feeling a bit conflicted. On the one hand, major federal investments with the potential to channel significant funding into the area of health and biosciences are always welcomed and celebrated by the medical community. On the other hand, however, this large-scale funding initiative overlooks the pockets of bite-sized health innovations that already exist across the country. Currently, many cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons in Canada have no clear way of evaluating how their patient outcomes fare compared to those of their colleagues in nearby hospitals, or in clinics across other provinces and territories. As a result, they have no way to identify gaps, learn from their peers, and improve the delivery of care in an evidence-based way. Several countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., already provide health information directly to physicians and hospital administrators to help drive quality improvement. The Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) has brought together a collaborative network of national and provincial partners to make cardiovascular health information accessible, and enable physicians to make informed decisions about patient care. While our initiative may not represent health innovation in a global context, it would certainly be cutting-edge for Canada, and would help elevate our country’s health care system to world-class status. This would also translate into economic growth and—by extension—the eventual creation of the “jobs, jobs, jobs” that Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and the supercluster initiative are promulgating. Good health is good business after all; as it keeps Canada’s working population contributing to the economy. Despite the potential health and economic benefits of our initiative, our pleas to the federal ministries of Health, Finance, Innovation and Science for funding to have come up short. Our ask for a $2.5-million annual investment in our innovative health initiative (which has already proven to be of high-value to physicians and patients) is significantly less than the earmarked $125-$250-million that each supercluster is slated to receive, and would improve the accessibility, responsiveness, quality, sustainability, and accountability of the cardiovascular health care system. Instead of funding successful “bite-sized” innovation projects such as ours that are at a risk of dying on the vine, however, huge investments are instead being made by the federal government into programs that have not yet even been conceptualized. Although a health information initiative may not be the first thing that comes to mind considering the cutting-edge medical technologies or experimental health research studies that often grab the media headlines, “innovation” in healthcare is not always about spearheading the newest or the latest: Often, its simply about making things better. In Canada, we don’t currently have the capacity to measure cardiovascular patient outcomes at the national scale, and we can’t improve what we can’t measure. This is troubling, considering approximately 20 per cent of Canadian deaths each year can be attributed to cardiovascular disease, and the associated economic burden of treatment is expected to swell to $28.3-billion annually by 2020. So, while job creation is undoubtedly a critical element of economic growth, shouldn’t we be working to first ensure that the jobs that our physicians across the country are already doing are producing the best possible outcomes for Canadians and the overall economy? Without making systematic improvements to the deficiencies in our current health care system, future investments into research and development in health and biosciences—including the $950-million allocated for innovation superclusters—risk unsustainability. As the CCS initiative proves, bite-sized innovations with the potential to improve the health care system in a sustainable way already exist—and often require minimal government investment to get off the ground. What is perhaps more troubling than Canada’s growing health system gaps, then, is the federal government’s lack of recognition of what is truly innovative, cost-effective, and impactful when it comes to improving the quality of life of Canadians. Dr. Catherine Kells is the president of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. news@hilltimes.com

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Bite-sized health investments a worthy use of innovation dollars

Clusters of innovation already exist in Canada, and they require much less than $950-million to get off the ground.

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