Rebranding Health Sciences North's research arm as the HSN Research Institute was about aligning the hospital's priorities with scientific research conducted in the northeast, said Health Sciences North CEO Dr. Denis Roy.
Roy, along with Dr. Janet McElhaney, scientific director of the HSN Research Institute and vice-president of research at Health Sciences North, sat down May 10 with Sudbury.com managing editor Mark Gentili and this reporter for an editorial board on the rebranding of the city's medical research facility.
Roy, who is also the new CEO of the research institute, said that while both organizations are governed separately, it was important to make sure hospital staff had a stake in the rebranded research institute.
“We didn't have the feeling the members of HSN considered the research institute their own,” Roy said, referring to the Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada (AMRIC), which was the original name for the research arm.
Fostering a spirit of collaboration between the institute and the medical professionals in the halls of HSN can only improve the quality of the medical research being done in the city, both Roy and McElhaney said, leading to scientific explorations based on the real-world conditions in the hospital itself.
In late November 2015, Dr. Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, the former CEO and scientific director of AMRIC, resigned from that position.
While Roy did not elaborate on Diaz-Mitoma's personal reasons for leaving, he said his departure did not come as a surprise.
“He's a builder and an entrepreneur,” Roy said. “After building AMRIC, what else was there to be done?”
But Diaz-Mitoma's departure did serve as a catalyst to rebrand the research arm and re-focus its priorities.
“We used that occasion to change the administrative structure,” Roy said.
The HSN Research Institute will focus on five key research areas that impact northerners: cancer care, infectious diseases, healthy aging, precision medicine, and northern and indigenous health.
Northern and indigenous health will intersect with all other research priorities, said Roy.
Dr. Janet McElhaney, a senior medical researcher and geriatrician with the hospital, will assume the role of scientific director of the research institute, and vice-president of research with Health Sciences North.
She said a recent tour of First Nations along the James Bay coast was an eye-opening experience that will help inform the research institute's focus on indigenous health.
“It's not about us going in as the experts,” she said. “That's the mistake we made.”
Instead, McElhaney said research projects will allow for Aboriginal self-determination, and let the communities help inform the research that will be done.
Research will focus on social determinants of health and high rates of chronic illness in indigenous communities.
The number of indigenous people between the ages of 55 and 64 reporting three or more chronic conditions is 3.5 times higher than in non-indigenous people, for example.
In addition, 45 per cent of indigenous persons over the age of 65 report fair or poor health with 69 per cent haivng activity limitations.
Those numbers are higher than in any other groups, said McElhaney.
To tackle many of the health issues that affect northerners at a disproportionate level the research institute will need to recruit more staff.
Roy said there is a sufficient number of cancer researchers based at the hospital, but the other focus areas should ideally have four or five senior researchers each.
McElhaney said whenever she travels she touts the amenities of living in Sudbury.
“This is a great community to raise children in,” she said, adding the quality of life in the city, and at the institute itself, are "best kept secrets" of living in Greater Sudbury.
McElhaney added medical researchers coming from larger urban centres can expect shorter commutes to work in Sudbury, and more affordable housing.
She added the new 14,000 square-foot research centre, currently under construction at the former St. Theresa's School site on Walford Road, is on budget and on schedule.
The centre will be able to accommodate more researchers, and will allow medical research companies — perhaps a local firm like Rna Diagnostics — to rent space.
