Last week, Providence Health Care President & CEO Fiona Dalton highlighted three complementary Providence services that will help support innovation internally and make it easier for external partners to connect with the right teams.
Providence Research is pleased to be leading the development of one of these services: Providence Health Innovation, Research + Engagement (PHIR+E). PHIR+E (pronounced fire) is how Providence Research will support research partnerships and innovative research opportunities.
Within the organization, there is a collective drive to seek creative solutions to problems through research and innovation. PHIR+E is dedicated to fostering the existing passion and brilliance of individuals within our organization and the collaborative energies of our industry and other partners to develop and translate innovative ideas into real-world solutions for the populations we serve.
Executive Director appointed
In conjunction with the roll-out of PHIR+E, I’m delighted to announce that Providence Research is investing in a position to lead the newly established portfolio and has appointed Ivone Martins to the role of Executive Director, PHIR+E.
Ivone has been serving as the Chief Innovation Development Officer at St. Paul’s Foundation for the past six years and in her time with the Foundation she has played key roles in the establishment of leading initiatives such as the BC Centre on Substance Use, Foundry, and Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster.
As Executive Director, PHIR+E, Ivone will focus on leveraging her extensive network to link Providence researchers with academic, industry, government and other partners and, conversely, identify opportunities to connect strategic external partners with Providence researchers. Ivone will also lead the development of a portfolio of funding opportunities to support translational research and innovation at Providence.
As Providence’s fundraising partner, St. Paul’s Foundation continues to be a generous supporter of research and innovation at Providence, and Ivone will maintain close ties with the Foundation in her new secondment role.
Skunkworks is first PHIR+E initiative
PHIR+E’s first initiative is the Hacking Pain skunkworks event later this month. This unique innovation event will bring multidisciplinary teams together and empower them with mentorship and rapid problem-solving tools to address challenges related to pain. It’s an example of how we will support a community of patients, clinicians and researchers to tackle big problems in radically different ways.
These are exciting times as PHC moves ever-forward on the new St. Paul’s Hospital and Clinical Support and Research Centre (CSRC), as well as other leading initiatives in health care, and continues to make provincial, national and global contributions through research and knowledge translation.
In the coming weeks, I look forward to sharing more details about how PHIR+E, along with Ideas: Forward and Providence Health Care Ventures (PHCV), will work collaboratively to nurture and support disruptive ideas that will transform care in BC and around the world.
