Good morning, Other Siders! We are officially in the Month of March, which means the countdown to 🌸 spring begins!

Here’s today’s motivational quote to keep you 🤨 (curious) through the week:

News that impacts you!

🧘🏼 Alberta spearheading Mental Wellness on budget

With inflation rates still staying quite high across North America, young Canadian struggles to stay afloat financially while financial stress continues to deteriorate their mental health. In a recent FP Canada’s 2022 Financial Stress Index survey, around 45% of Canadian adults under the age of 34 years reported that financial stress has predominately impacted their mental health. However, programs like Virtual Group Therapy which is funded by Alberta Health System are breaking the financial barriers to provide affordable and timely access to Mental Health Services. Kudos Alberta!

There are other resources such as Affordable Therapy Network that connect people to cheaper therapy options across Canada for both in-person and virtual therapy options.

Something to think about: We usually share our life stress and problems with our social circle/ friends and family. That’s mostly your so-called informal therapy session, however, we mostly hesitate to share our financial issues with our peers or friends. Affordable resources like these should be made more readily available and should be promoted even more.

💭 Healthcare Divides the Country into Three Schools of Thought- Public, Private and Both

With Justin Trudeau’s government having one-on-one meetings with the provincial premieres, the battle over the private and public healthcare systems is getting stronger day by day and has been dividing the country between different mindsets. A recent study conducted by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds that Canadians are of three mindsets about healthcare delivery in Canada.

• Public Health Purists (39%) - believe that the privatization of healthcare will lead to more challenges in the system.

• Private Care Proponents (28%)- believe the crumbling healthcare system needs innovation and evolution through privatization.

• Stuck in between are the Curious but Hesitant (33%)- who believe in a Public Private Partnership model where for-profit doctors should be contracted by public facilities but are concerned about access to low-income Canadian.

Which side of the spectrum do you lie on?

💭Let us know your thoughts by writing to us at [email protected]

🛫 Alberta is on board too!

The federal government pocketed another deal by onboarding Alberta as the seventh province to sign the healthcare funding agreement worth $24 billion to be disbursed over the next 10 years.

This $24 billion funding as part of the agreement includes:

• $233 million of one-time pay towards urgent issues and needs like pediatric hospitals and emergency rooms, as well as catering to long wait times for surgeries.

• $2.9 billion to be focused on shared health priorities.

The agreement also seeks to enhance the availability of healthcare services for families, particularly in rural and isolated regions, as well as underserved communities. Additional objectives include promoting a robust and well-supported healthcare workforce, enhancing mental health and addiction treatment, and enabling access to electronic health records for Albertans.

👩‍👦Kindercare365: On-demand health care for kids in Ontario

To complement existing primary care or to fill gaps in seeking primary care for kids in Ontario, Kindercare365 (KC365) has been made available. KC365 provides access to nurse practitioners (NPs) that can help with baby care, routine childhood immunizations, and diagnosis/treatment for common health conditions.  

NPs are authorized to provide many of the same services as family physicians, including diagnosing illnesses and prescribing medications in Ontario. Access to NPs is available 365 days a year and commits to the provision of an immediate virtual appointment with a nurse practitioner from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., 7 days a week and in-person appointments if required, by the next day. 

Despite it being legal under both the federal and provincial rules ( Canada Health Act or the Commitment to the future of Medicare Act in Ontario), skeptics still have their reservations and bring up the ‘equality vs. equity’ debate over such a service.

Upcoming Tools & Tech

⏰ Respite & Insight! Waitlist management & regional view for surgical services 

Surgeons and their office staff at Humber River Hospital now have access to an electronic waitlist management system, Novari ATC™. The solution aims to streamline the scheduling of surgeries and related procedures with the hospital.

Designed in Canada by a team of clinicians and health IT experts, it integrates with each hospital’s surgical information system (e.g., Cerner, Meditech, Picis, SIS, etc.) and is compatible with and complements provincial wait time systems across the country (i.e., WTIS, PAR-NS, etc.).

 Key benefits include:

•  Waitlist Management: Colour-coded wait lists for individual surgeons and group pooled lists help ensure that the right patients are scheduled for surgery at the right time.

• Optimized OR Block Utilization: Data is collected based on a surgeon’s previous procedure times (including set up and clean up times) and shared to help plan realistic patient lists for surgery.

• Novari Pre-Surgical Screening module (Novari PSS™): Using local, national, or international clinical best practice directives Novari ATC’s™ optional PSS module can determine the type of pre-admission clinic (PAC) appointment and/or pre-operative testing appropriate for each patient.

• Improve analytics & forecasting: Novari ATC™ can provide insight into the pipeline for both scheduled and not yet schedule surgeries and the related demand for resources.

• Transparent communications: Using the messaging functionality, information on new requests, changes, and cancellations can be communicated in real-time between physician offices, scheduling offices, the registration department, and the pre-admission clinics.

🖥️ A First-in-Canada: New Tech to transform cancer care at Nova Scotia Health

Novia Scotia Health, through The Oncology Transformation Project (OTP), will be the first health system in North America to install the Systemic Therapy Management (STM) module, part of Varian's (a Siemens Healthineers company) ARIA Oncology Information System (OIS) for patient and treatment management. The module will help streamline processes for medical oncology prescribing, pharmacy dispensing, infusion operations, and drug administration.

The Novia Scotia Health Cancer Care Program will also extend its use of Varian's noona® software application for patient engagement and patient management. The application allows patients to connect with their care teams and report symptoms from home. In addition, access to rural communities will be extended via communication between the two cancer centres in Halifax and Sydney and the province’s eight community oncology sites. Varian’s InSightive™ Gen2 will also be made available to facilitate the conversion of data into actionable insights for evidence-based decision-making.

Therefore, Nova Scotia Health along with Varian aims to utilize the latter’s Multi-Disciplinary Oncology Solutions portfolio to streamline patient care and coordination – from screening to survivorship. Hope lies ahead…

Evolving Global Health

🦠 Sustaining an active role in the fight against COVID!

Acknowledging the potential threat from the emergence of a fourth coronavirus or new variants that evade existing immunity and might have higher transmissibility, fifty experts collaborated from around the world to create a Comprehensive Coronavirus Vaccines R&D Roadmap (CVR) - unveiled by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP).

The roadmap includes steps to accelerate the development of broadly effective coronavirus vaccines, mitigate the potential threat of future coronaviruses that have not yet emerged, and ideally, prevent infections and transmission- worldwide.

The CVR is organized into five topic areas:

• Virology: learning more about the global distribution of coronaviruses in animal reservoirs with the potential to spill over to humans.

• Immunology: learning more about human immunology to expand the breadth and durability of immune protection from vaccines and natural infection.

• Vaccinology: identifying preferred product characteristics for vaccines, including new technologies and identifying the best methods to assess vaccine efficacy.

• Animal & human infection models for vaccine research: expanding the range of suitable animal models, which is a key barrier to developing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines.

• Policy and financing: reinvigorating and sustaining a high level of political commitment and long-term investment in vaccine R&D, manufacturing and global distribution of broadly protective coronavirus vaccines.

Each area includes a summary of key barriers and knowledge gaps along with a set of technical milestones for measuring success. Despite multiple ongoing efforts in this direction, the CVR provides more structure along with time-bound milestones to ensure efforts are well-aligned and focused on building coordination, leadership, and investment.

🤧 Don’t you ‘flu’ me… 

Despite progress seen in terms of the decline in the number of cases since the multi-country outbreak of mpox, some countries continue to see a sustained incidence of illness. Furthermore, the underreported detection and under-reporting of confirmed cases add cannot be ignored. Therefore, the status given to mpox as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) was upheld by WHO. This decision was made to ensure that efforts do not fall short towards mpox prevention, preparedness and response within national surveillance and control programmes, including for HIV and other sexually transmissible infections.

Furthermore, a critical finding published in the Lancet revealed that mpox has been shown to produce a severe and deadly form of the disease in those living with advanced HIV infections. As per the study, the virus has been shown to produce a severe necrotizing form of mpox in the context of advanced immunosuppression and appears to behave like an AIDS-defining condition, with a high prevalence of fulminant dermatological and systemic manifestations and death. Such findings serve as a ‘call to attention’ not only for countries where mpox is on the rise but also for those witnessing a reduction in cases.

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