Video Transcript – IHSPR: Leading research to improve health care
Back to feature: Evidence for a Stronger Health Care SystemDr. Robyn Tamblyn: The Institute of Health Services and Policy Research is one of the 13 institutes of the CIHR. And it’s probably one of the most important institutes because its job is actually to conduct research that will improve both the way we deliver care and the systems in which we do it in order to improve the outcomes of health for Canadians.
Dr. Jeannie Haggerty: Innovation and originality is one of the criteria for funding research by the institute and we don’t want to be just repeating things, but when we sit on committees, we really have our eye out for things that are, wow that’s really new, nobody’s doing this – so we’re interested in what innovations can make life better for Canadians.
Dr. Steve Morgan: I don’t think it’d be possible to do some of the most innovative work that I do without IHSPR, in particular IHSPR funds a series of applied research programs called ‘emerging team’s in applied health services research. I hold one of the grants in emerging team grant that allows us to bring together experts in pharmaceutical policy from coast to coast in Canada and also to dial that community of researchers in with the policy makers in Canada and policy makers abroad so that we can exchange information both across the research community but also between researchers and policy makers in practically a real-time basis
Dr. Patricia Martens: In 2001 we received funding from CIHR for what we call the ‘need to know’ team and that’s a collaborative of the university academic centre, the regional health authority’s topical planners and some top level planners from government and the reason this was kind of revolutionary at the time was we worked with them at the beginning of the research to help them define the questions of relevance to answer, then we worked with them all along the way to get the answers right – both from our point of view of academia and their point of view of relevance and then at the end of the day, it’s no-brainer that they want to use the research and so it gets translated very easily into policy and practice.
Dr. Andreas Laupacis: Right now I’ve become quite passionate about doing research to find better ways to engage in citizens and by that I mean just regular members of the public in designing the healthcare system that best meets their needs. The Institute of Health Services and Policy Research is crucial for those of us who do our research in health services because they provide us with the funds that we need to hire the research coordinators and to help us do the research. Without that we simply wouldn’t be able to do what we do. What we do is try and inform the public more about how the healthcare system works and to get their views about how it should work and to try and get politicians and managers to actually use those views to manage the healthcare system
Dr. Jeannie Haggerty: There is an initiative by the institute that is so exciting that we are just hopping in our community and it is the community-based primary healthcare initiative and it’s bringing together teams of researchers to look at things like, how do we make good transitions in the system, how can we really make sure that vulnerable populations really have access to healthcare and we have been advocating for this for years and it is just so exciting to see this just finally in our laps that we can actually do something really important and we know it’s going to make a huge splash in the system
Dr. Ivy Bourgeault: Sustainability of the healthcare system is critically important and the IHSPR has been a central leader in focusing their attention on those issues and have researchers focus on issues of sustainability so in the instance of health human resources the institute has been a leader in supporting health human resources because it tends to kind of lay under the radar, it really is, it’s the biggest cost driver, so the bulk of the cost of the healthcare system is who’s providing the care and so when we talk about sustainability of the healthcare system it’s really about how do we best deploy the resources that we have because they are the biggest cost driver.
Dr. Robyn Tamblyn: The bottom line is we really have to figure out how to transform our system to make it more efficient to be able to deliver care for the chronic disease era, the baby boomers turning into seniors who have lots of different challenges ahead and the only way we can do this is to invest in research and innovation. That’s the only way it can happen.
Dr. Patricia Martens: Could I function without the CIHR? No way! CIHR is the main funding source for health services research throughout the country. Without CIHR I think we’d be depending on provincial agencies local foundations, but CIHR gives a sense of mandate and mission.
Dr. Ivy Bourgeault: I think on a big picture, the IHSPR is really a gem, it’s really sort of a national treasure would we say that Canadians should really realize that all the work that these researchers do. They’re few but mighty number of researchers who are doing critical research to sustain the services that they so dearly cherish.