Brightshores Health System leaving research institute it founded

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Brightshores Health System is discontinuing its partnership with the research institute it founded a short time ago.

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The local hospital corporation announced Wednesday that it was leaving the Brightshores Research Institute and was re-establishing its own Office of Research and Innovation. The office had existed within Brightshores before the institute was spun off into an independent non-profit entity.

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Brightshores president and chief executive officer Ann Ford said on Thursday the research institute’s vision has changed, and Brightshores has now decided to return its staff that had been seconded to the non-profit.

“It has moved away from more locally-based research to a broader mandate,” Ford said. “As we looked at this and discussed we decided the research institute priorities really no longer aligned with the priority of Brightshores Health System, which is really to focus on our local care and local communities.”

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Brightshores Research Institute interim board chair Kathy Winter said by e-mail on Thursday that the institute will be taking the next few months to manage the transition, including a name change.

She said the independent non-profit organization’s mandate is to contribute to transformational initiatives in rural health care in rural communities across Canada, and Brightshores Health System was one of multiple partners working to achieve that mandate.

“We look forward to continuing to work with partners to advance rural healthcare and wellness through innovations tailored to meet the distinct needs of rural communities,” Winter said.

Ford said that Brightshores had originally started a research mandate under the office of research and innovation, and then looked to move it to more of an independent organization. About a year ago the Brightshores Research Institute was incorporated with a separate board of directors.

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Ford said that the change won’t disrupt any ongoing research projects at Brightshores, with the office serving as a central hub for research co-ordination, grant support and partnership development.

“We have about 30 ongoing research projects,” Ford said. “The team working on those projects will be the team that is brought back into the hospital, and those projects will continue with our partners.”

Among the initiatives that will continue are some clinical research projects involving local specialist physicians working with patients, Ford said.

Another project Brightshores has been working on involves wound care specialists working with a company called Swift Medical in using an AI application that helps measure the progress of treatment on the significant wounds of some of their patients.

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Ford said the office’s mandate will continue to have a focus on the unique challenges facing rural hospitals, like those that make up Brightshores.

“Part of our priority was to continue that locally, so we can have opportunities to shape the health care we are providing today and the health care we are providing in the future to best suit the needs of patients in our community,” said Ford. “We want to keep it local.”

Ford said on Thursday the research institute still occupies space at the Owen Sound hospital and will have to find a new place to operate from at the end of a transition period.

The research institute will no longer be able to use the Brightshores name going forward, which is property of the local health system.

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