The Brightshores Health System says it’s Office of Research and Innovation is going to continue its work while becoming an independent non-profit entity, now known as the Brightshores Research Institute.
Executive Director Neil MacLean says, “It’s a vision of the Brightshores hospital board to launch the institute for a couple of reasons. One is to promote new models of care and to drive quality, but the other piece is an opportunity to work effectively as a hospital with its community members to better support people.”
He says some questions they’re looking to address are how to age in place and enhance access to care while there are provider shortages, limited facilities and significant distance between them. They’re also looking at workforce wellness, creative scheduling and team-based care to prevent burnout and ensure stability of services.
MacLean explains, “It started out with staff from the hospital being recruited to help bring some initial clinical trials and innovation projects to life and as the team started bringing these projects to life, there was a lot of interest and momentum, not just within the hospital to do more but potential to collaborate with community members, primary care physicians, home care providers around, ‘How do we work more effectively together as a health system?’”
MacLean says becoming a not-for-profit institute has some advantages, noting, “It enables us to grow the number of partnerships we want to work with, whether it’s industry partners or colleges and universities or even individuals. Working with the Brightshores Hospital Foundation as a key partner in this as well as organizations that could potentially be beyond Grey Bruce” as a region that are struggling with the same challenges around how do we improve access to care for people living in rural communities?”
As the Office of Research and Innovation, and now the institute, they have been working on five clinical trials, four academic studies, and five active innovation partnerships.
“Clinical trials are predominantly being led out of the Owen Site site of Brightshores and they’re focused around neurology for people with stroke, as well as respirology for people with pulmonary fibrosis and asthma,” says MacLean.
He adds, “It’s bringing world-class clinical trials that are typically being offered in large urban settings like Hamilton. London, Toronto into Owen Sound.”
MacLean explains, “The academic projects are really around opportunities to evaluate new models of care. Specifically around palliative care. How do we work to evaluate new technologies that are being deployed in clinical environments.”
He says one example of the work on innovation is a visual tool used around the world called “Swift” which supports people with complex chronic wounds to have them assessed in real time. It started at one Brightshores site and is now used at all six of its hospitals. “Patients, when they come into the clinics, they can see not just the image for today, but they can see the progress that they’re making over time. It’s often a slow heal, or slow trajectory to healing and people get frustrated because they don’t see the progress. With this new digital tool, they can see,” says MacLean.
The launch of the institute now opens the door for us as well to work with other organizations trying to solve the same problems.
Meanwhile, MacLean says the Brightshores Research Institute is good for healthcare staff recruitment and retention as well. “Physicians that are specialists that are thinking about relocating to the community are often coming from the large urban settings with the academic backgrounds in research or innovation experience as well. Things that they want to bring with them,” says MacLean.
He adds, “On the retention side, we’re working directly with physicians and even the frontline nurses to better understand the frontline challenges they have in terms delivering patients care and even some of the tools that exist today to reduce administrative burden.” He says that’s part of the work the institute is excited by. “There are projects being considered today for pharmacists to support them.”
Brightshores is a regional health system that operates six hospitals in Grey Bruce.
