Government & Policy

TORONTO – Ontario will soon be accepting applications for its $20 million Health Technologies Fund, which will support the development of world class, market-ready, made-in-Ontario health technologies by accelerating prototyping, evaluation and adoption in the Ontario healthcare sector. Read More

EDMONTON – The Alberta government is consolidating its four Alberta Innovation agencies into one, and will be cutting their overall budget by $44 million. Deron Bilous (pictured), minister of economic development and trade, said the move was a “very tough decision” prompted by low oil prices. Read More

OTTAWA – The Minister of Health, Jane Philpott (pictured), the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development, Navdeep Bains, and the Minister of Science, Kirsty Duncan, have announced $13.8 million in funding for 22 innovative eHealth projects. The projects are based at sites across Canada and focus on youth mental health and seniors with complex care needs at home. Read More

MIRAMICHI, N.B. – Horizon Health Network CEO John McGarry (pictured) says it is time to move away from the concept that all care must occur in hospitals. “We have seen a shift in demography coming for some time – an aging population, southern migration within the province, and the shift from rural to urban living,” McGarry writes in a commentary. Read More

QUEBEC CITY – Health Minister Gaétan Barrette (pictured) announced that Quebec will move toward the use of a single electronic health record system in hospitals across the province. The solution decided upon by the province is called Cristal-Net, and it has been in use at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Québec – Université Laval since 2003. Read More

EDMONTON – The Alberta Health Ministry is suing an Ontario doctor whose alleged misdiagnosis of a brain tumour led to the patient needing extensive, and costly, treatment in the Western province. Read More

VICTORIA – The British Columbia government has announced a new four-year strategy for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) services to help health authorities increase patient access to MRI scans. Read More

VANCOUVER – A new expert report recommends immediate steps to reduce fatal overdoses, addiction and other severe harms related to unsafe prescribing in British Columbia. The province’s four largest private addiction treatment facilities have partnered with over 70 of B.C.’s leading addiction and public health practitioners to endorse the report’s recommendations. Read More

EDMONTON – Alberta’s new NDP government announced it will increase healthcare spending in the province by 2.2% to $19.7 billion this year. That compares with the previous government’s spring budget, which called for a cut to health expenditures to $18.9 billion, after which funding would have stayed flat. Read More