Last week we celebrated some impressive accomplishments, as an organization and also as basketball fans. The city, and country, came alive supporting the Toronto Raptors as they made franchise history and beat the Miami Heat last night, advancing to the Eastern Conference finals! Let's hope they bring that same energy into Game 1 tomorrow night.
UHN is a community of innovators. The work done here each day has led to inspiring and life-changing research, collaborations and discoveries. Last week we spotlighted these achievements at the UHN Transplant Evening: BE AMAZED! It was a highly successful event, and between it and some incredible recent gifts to the Multi-Organ Transplant Program, we were able to announce that $8.7 million was raised for the Transplant Campaign to support the amazing work of the transplant team. Over the past year this team has performed a record 581 transplants, including the first hand and forearm transplant in Canada, which took place at Toronto Western. I would like to thank everyone working in the program for your dedication, which led to a truly incredible year.
I will be heading to Israel this week to join the Premier, the Minister of Research and Innovation, and the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care on Ontario’s mission. During the visit I will have a chance to showcase the collaboration between UHN’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, as we work towards establishing The International Centre for Cardiovascular Innovation. This centre will improve the quality of life for Canadians and Israelis living with heart disease through research and collaborations resulting in new and enhanced treatments.
Innovation is happening daily in our hospitals, and in collaboration with SickKids, through our Caring Safely initiative. Our Caring Safely team has launched an employee website to answer your questions and frame the discussion around UHN’s approach to preventable harm. You can learn more
here.
Following the IT Transformation Town Halls, Dr. David Jaffray, EVP of Technology and Innovation, is asking for your feedback on IT at UHN. You can let him know how technology and digital services are currently supporting your work and where you feel improvements need to be made by filling out this short
survey.
Lastly, I wanted to follow-up on our PVP Open Houses. I am thrilled that we had such strong feedback, with over 1000 participants, from physicians to patients. This resulted in over 700 comments and suggestions that will help us enrich our Purpose, Values and Principles process. We want to continue engaging all of you, so we’re currently exploring digital collaboration tools to help generate further input. I will provide more information once we’ve landed on next steps.
UHN has fostered a strong spirit of innovation and I look forward to continue sharing our achievements throughout the week, both at home and aboard.
Peter
