A few months back, I told you about how my neck had gone bad, really bad. At that time, I was in the middle of a six-month dive into pain, alleviated only by gobbling unwholesome quantities of Percoset. Three weeks ago last Friday, I had an amazing surgery that relieved my pain and gave me a neck that feels 20 years younger.
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Engineering techniques can be used to eliminate inefficiencies in Canada’s health care system, as the work by a new Toronto research centre shows. In the modern race to innovate, the health care industry is lagging decades behind manufacturing and other service industries. Michael Carter is ready to launch a game of catch-up.
As head of the new Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering at the University of Toronto, Dr. Carter’s job seems simple on paper, but a lot tougher to execute: Replace the isolated elements of the system with a more efficient, productive health care system that gets everyone pulling in the same direction and makes the best use of limited resources.
“Every time I go into a hospital, I’m looking at it with a different eye,” Dr. Carter says. “Everywhere I look I see opportunities for improving efficiency. … It’s not just cutting costs. It’s really important to have the system set up properly.”
You know, we should have paid a little closer attention to Microsoft’s decision yesterday to extend Windows XP sales to “June 2010 or one year after the general availability of Windows 7” — if the company was really planning on shipping Windows 7 in 2010, that first date doesn’t make a lot of sense unless the plan is to ship Windows 7 much, much earlier. And hey — what’s Bill Gates doing telling investors this afternoon that Windows 7 will come “in the next year” and that he’s “super-enthused” about it? As far as we know, the official Windows 7 timeline hasn’t changed, so Bill might just talking about beta versions, but something’s clearly up Windows-wise in Redmond — perhaps Vista’s wow is not long for this now.
They’re considered a vital tool in diagnosing cancer and deciding how to treat it.
But in Ontario, cancer patients don’t have access to PET scanners — imaging technology around for almost 30 years but still considered experimental in this province. “If I was a cancer patient, I would definitely scream for this technology that will let you know if you’re a candidate for surgery, whether to remove your tumour, whether you need surgery plus radiation or if you need chemotherapy,” said Dr. Jean-Luc Urbain, citywide chief of nuclear medicine in London.
Urbain is welcoming a call by Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer, who plans to introduce a resolution at Queen’s Park calling on the government to make PET scans available to Ontarians.
“PET scans are available to patients pretty well throughout the world — in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the United States and other provinces in Canada,” Witmer said in a phone interview. “But here in Ontario, if your doctor recommends a PET scan, you are forced to travel to the United States at your own expense.”
