Health Systems Management
Supporting physicians at the point of care
Wojtek Michalowski has changed the way health researchers and practitioners understand clinical decision-support tools for managing patients. His research is premised on the idea that a patient’s history would be entered into computer systems capable of automatic evaluation, using customized knowledge bases, to suggest possible therapies. Developments in the research mean that clinical decision-making algorithms to support evidence-based patient management are on the not too distant horizon. Prof. Michalowski leads the MET (Mobile Emergency Triage) clinical decision support research team based at the Telfer School.
Improving patient flow through acute care
A professor at the Telfer School since 2007, Jonathan Patrick uses advanced modelling techniques to solve large-scale sequential decision problems in healthcare. Patrick was recently awarded a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to study capacity planning within a network of community services, with the goal of ensuring timely discharges through the acute care setting as well as scheduling models for entry into health systems. Professor Patrick and his team will build a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model that combines the advanced scheduling and appointment scheduling problems into one model capable of handling multiple resources consumed in sequence. It will be assessed in light of predictions about congestion within a hospital.
THTEX: a view from healthcare’s front lines
The launch of the Telfer Health Transformation Exchange (THTEX) this year has created exciting new opportunities for research collaboration between health systems professors and clinicians. A panel discussion in February 2015 at the Telfer School — “Transforming Healthcare: Realities and Opportunities, A Clinical Perspective” — featured Dr. James W.T. Chan, Dr. Michael Fung-Kee-Fung, and Dr. Mark Walker, all from the Ottawa Hospital (TOH) and the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine, along with approximately 30 students from the Master of Science in Health Systems and Master of Health Administration graduate programs and other interested participants. The Telfer Health Transformation Exchange held its second meeting in June 2015 focusing on transforming healthcare in the region through research and education.
Getting to the root of health HR challenges
Professor Bourgeault, CIHR Chair in Gender, Work and Health Human Resources, made a number of important contributions to her field. She is the author of “Double Isolation: Immigrants and Older Adult Care Work in Canada” in the book Caring on the Clock: The Complexities and Contradictions of Paid Care Work (Rutgers University Press, 2015).
As head of the Canadian Health Human Resources Network, Bourgeault was among the stakeholders consulted by the federal government’s advisory panel on healthcare innovation. The panel’s recommendations, released in July 2015, cited Ivy Bourgeault’s research as well as the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences ground-breaking report on health human resources in Canada.
The Health Systems Research Seminar Series
This series of seminars enables faculty and students to tap into the latest knowledge and current insights of research leaders from a broad spectrum of healthcare organizations.
