The Ottawa Hospital is one of Canada’s top learning and research hospitals, where excellent care is inspired by research and driven by compassion.
Our researchers are making important discoveries every day, unlocking the mysteries about how the body works, why we get sick and which treatments are best. But what makes us stand out even more is that we are leading the way in translating these discoveries into new therapies and approaches for improving health. Patients at The Ottawa Hospital may be the first to benefit, but the impact of our discoveries is felt around the world.
For example, we are one of the first hospitals in the world to offer stem cell transplantation as a clinical treatment for aggressive multiple sclerosis, based on the ground-breaking research of our own Dr. Harold Atkins and Dr. Mark Freedman. Dr. Atkins and his colleagues have also applied this research to other devastating autoimmune diseases, such as myasthenia gravis (MG). Our annual report tells the story of Anne Scott, the first MG patient in the world to receive this treatment. Not only did she achieve her goal of seeing her daughter get married, she has also been free of all MG symptoms for 16 years.
In the last year, we’ve also discovered how exercise may be able to help heal the brain, how asthma diagnosis could be improved, how chest pain can be managed more efficiently and how an individual’s cancer cells might be used to create a personalized anti-cancer vaccine, just to mention a few of our exciting breakthroughs.
So it may not be surprising to learn that this year we’ve exceeded all our research goals, with an overall score of 96 percent for research in The Ottawa Hospital’s corporate performance scorecard
We are very pleased with the considerable progress that we have made to imbed research into all aspects of The Ottawa Hospital, from providing the best clinical care to improving the quality and delivery of health services. We also continue to align closely with the University of Ottawa and its Faculty of Medicine, and we’re excited about a new partnership with Algonquin College.
We continue to receive outstanding support from our community through The Ottawa Hospital Foundation. Every dollar donated to research allows our scientists to attract up to 10 more dollars from external sources, for a total research budget of over $100 million. This funding not only improves care for our patients and advances science, but also creates high quality jobs and training opportunities that attract some of the best researchers to Ottawa.
In the coming year, we look forward to expanding on this success and planning for a new world-class health and research centre at site of the former Sir John Carling building. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build an innovative 21st century hospital from the ground up, where care is indeed inspired by research and driven by compassion.
“The impact of our discoveries is felt around the world”
