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Major step forward for health research in Sudbury

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Health researchers in Sudbury will get an important boost when the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences opens a new satellite office at Health Sciences North.

This is the sixth satellite site that the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Science, or ICES, will build.

"It'll be a home for people to access data and expertise that'll allow them to study local issues that are important to local researchers," Dr. Michael Conlon, the ICES North site director, said.

The office and the health data it will provide is being made possible due to a $563,424 investment by the federal and provincial governments, and Greater Sudbury Development Corporation.

"There's a satellite with every academic health sciences centre and we're now the last, final build with our academic health sciences centre," Conlon said.

"All of the partners, so Laurentian University, Health Sciences North Research Institute, (Northern Ontario School of Medicine), have been talking about trying to get this kind of access to data for years. It's really nice to see that now is time and it's going to happen."

The health sciences research is "stuff that's related to access to care, risk factors that's associated with people not getting access to care," Conlon said. "It really allows you to access the entire repository of the 13-million records for everybody in Ontario, so you can follow patterns of care, outcomes of care, those kinds of things."

And it also helps patients because it allows them to monitor the outcomes of care to see who is at risk of not receiving care, Conlon said.

Dominic Giroux, CEO of Health Sciences North and the Health Sciences North Research Institute, said the addition of a new satellite office of ICES at the hospital is significant because Northern Ontario was the missing part of that provincial hub of research. It will allow researchers in Sudbury have access to highly confidential patient data.

"Such confidential data requires highly secured technology, equipment, facilities," Giroux said.

That is why Health Sciences North will be renovating about 1000 square feet space, which will allow Health Sciences North Research Institute researchers, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and Laurentian University to be able to probe the data at a patient level.

"It really brings Northern Ontario at the same level as other parts of the province in terms of research potential," Giroux said. "Now our researchers, across post-secondary education and in the health-care sector, will have access to the same data as any other researcher in the province, right here at home.

"It puts us in a different league from a research perspective and it allows us to attract and retain even more top researchers because they will have access to the same tools as they were located in Toronto, Hamilton, London, Ottawa or Kingston."

Over time, about 12 new positions will be created from the new ICES satellite office, Giroux said.

Giroux also gave an update on the installation of a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner at Health Sciences North.

The original plan was to have the equipment operational by mid-2018.

"We're at stage 3.1 of a four stage process of approval with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care," Giroux said. "We're very excited with the equipment. We're ready to go "¦ We're just waiting for the green light from the ministry.

"The minister had committed that the capital approval process would be completed in a timely way to allow for construction to begin by the end of the 2017-18 fiscal year. Timelines are getting tight, but we're ready to go."

Asked when he expected construction to begin, Giroux said it depends on the timing of the green light from the ministry.

"But we're all hands on deck, ready to go for construction as soon as we get stage four approval from the ministry," Giroux said.

The capital review process has been accelerated, Giroux said.

"But a process is a process," Giroux said.

Twitter: @keith_dempsey 

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