Objectives

Discuss tactics to ensure safe practices by healthcare providers.
Explore how industry is engineering safety into the workplace and their products.
The role of policy in patient safety.
Revisiting previous assumptions about safety thinking.

Location

MaRS Auditorium
101 College Street . Toronto . Ontario
M5G 1L7

Schedule & Speaker Bios

Below is the event schedule for Techna 2016: Getting To Zero: Engineering Safety into Healthcare Technology and Practice. Here you can view the agenda and speaker bios by clicking the event times below. Video recordings of individual speeches will be available on this page after the event within each segment. The Techna 2016 Symposium will feature a live tweeting system for participants to add comments in parallel to the discussions and presentations.

Videos of the Day

To view the video playlist of the full day at Techna Symposium please click the button below.

Agenda

8:00-8:30 – Breakfast and Registration

8:30-8:45 – Welcome Message and Opening Remarks

David Jaffray

Executive Vice President, Technology & Innovation, UHN; Director, Techna Institute, UHN

Dr. David Jaffray graduated from the University of Alberta with a B.Sc. in Physics (Hons.) in 1988 and completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Western Ontario in 1994. Following graduation, he took a position as Staff Physicist in the Department of Radiation Oncology at William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan where he instigated a direction of research that garnered funding from the NIH and from congressionally-directed funding programs. Dr. Jaffray became a Board Certified Medical Physicist (ABMP – Radiation Oncology) in 1999. In 2002, Dr. Jaffray joined the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto as Head of Radiation Physics and a Senior Scientist within the Ontario Cancer Institute. David holds the Fidani Chair in Radiation Physics, is the Director of the Techna Institute for Health Technology Development at the University Health Network and recently became the Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation at the University Health Network. He is a Professor in the Departments of Radiation Oncology, Medical Biophysics, and Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. His primary area of research has been in the development and application of image-guided therapy. He has over 5 patents issued and several licensed, including, kilovoltage cone-beam computed tomography for image-guided radiation therapy. Dr. Jaffray has >200 peer-reviewed publications in the field, >100 invited lectures, and holds numerous peer-review and industry sponsored research grants. He sits on numerous scientific and research boards and has contributed to the NIH and CIHR grant review process for several years. He is an active member of the AAPM and teaching role in workshops and annual meeting of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). He has an active interest in commercialization and led the development of a variety of commercial products including software and hardware for QA and the development of small animal irradiator systems for basic research. He has successfully supervised over 20 graduate students and fellows.

Dr. Jaffray has won each of the major prizes in the field of the medical physics, including, the Sylvia Sorkin-Greenfield Award, The Farrington Daniels Award, and the Sylvia Fedoruk Award. In 2004, Dr. Jaffray was identified as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 and was recognized by The University of Western Ontario with their Young Alumni Award in 2004. His current research interests focus on the development of imaging technologies and methods with a focus on image-guided interventions, including radiation therapy, drug delivery, and surgery.

Joseph Cafazzo

Executive Director, Healthcare Human Factors, UHN

Dr. Joseph Cafazzo is the Clinical Core Lead for Design and Engineering at Techna Institute, and leads the Healthcare Human Factors team and the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at University Health Network (UHN).

As Executive Director and Founder of Healthcare Human Factors, he leads his team of thirty human factors professionals design and evaluate health technologies from within a healthcare setting. As the largest group of its kind, the team performs academic research and human factors evaluation and design services for private companies and public institutions, including national and provincial governmental agencies, start-ups and multi-national companies, product manufacturers, and clinical patient safety leaders.

Dr. Cafazzo is also Lead at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, a state-of-the-art research facility devoted to the evaluation and design of healthcare technology, hosting seventy researchers and staff. Dr. Cafazzo has been an active researcher of the use of technology to facilitate patient self-care of complex chronic conditions such as diabetes, end-stage renal disease, and congestive heart failure.

He is also Senior Director of Medical Engineering at the University Health Network, where he is responsible for the entire life cycle of medical technology for the health system. At the University of Toronto, Dr. Cafazzo is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, where he teaches and conducts research in the areas of clinical engineering, human factors, and health informatics. He is a recipient of the Career Scientist award by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.

Peter Kyriakides

Patient Partner, UHN

Peter Kyriakides is a Patient Partner and former patient of Toronto Rehab, who now volunteers mentoring patients, helping them find their strength hidden within. Part of his mission is to share his story in order to educate, uplift and empower people from all walks of life.

8:45-9:45 – Keynote Speaker

Rollin Fairbanks

National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare

Rollin J. “Terry” Fairbanks, MD, MS, FACEP is director of the National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare and associate director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2), where he is also responsible for the Simulation Training & Education Laboratory (MedStar SiTEL), all part of MI2 at MedStar Health, a $5B annual revenue, 10 hospital distributed healthcare network in the Washington DC/Baltimore MD region. Dr. Fairbanks practices as an attending physician in the Emergency Department at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington DC. He is an associate professor of Emergency Medicine at Georgetown University and adjunct associate professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo. In addition to his medical credentials, Dr. Fairbanks holds a masters degree in Industrial Systems Engineering/human factors engineering. He uses this background to apply the science of safety to medical systems, in research, education, safety advisement, and device usability consulting. Dr. Fairbanks’ work has been funded by the NIH (NINR, NIBIB), AHRQ, ONC, and several foundations. He has authored more than 100 publications on healthcare safety and human factors including a recently released book on the topic. He serves on the National Patient Safety Foundation Board of Advisors, Emergency Medicine Patient Safety Foundation Board of Directors; He is a Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) Senior Fellow, and has served on the AAMI Human Factors Engineering Committee since 2004, helping author and edit several usability standards including HF74, and was recently appointed to serve on the National Advisory Group on Health Information Technology in England.

9:45-10:45 – Trust and the Culture of Error

Peter Rossos

Chief Medical Information Officer, UHN

As Chief Medical Information Officer and staff gastroenterologist, Dr. Rossos’ priorities include strategic alignment of clinical systems with workflow and productivity in order to improve outcomes related to patient safety, quality improvement, education and research. In addition to working closely with local academic leadership and researchers, he contributes to provincial and national efforts to advance the use of information and communication technologies. Dr. Rossos received his M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1986, where he subsequently completed his Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology training, and therapeutic endoscopy fellowship. He studied Leadership Development for Physicians in Academic Health Centers at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2004 and graduated from the Executive MBA Program at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management as a Bregman Scholar in June, 2008. He has achieved international recognition for his innovation and leadership in informatics and telehealth while chairing and serving on a number of local and national committees. Recent projects include serving as Clinical Co-Lead for ConnectingGTA, an information hub to provide better access to information for approximately 750 health care organizations resulting in better care for 6.75 million Ontario residents and leading a national synoptic reporting project for gastrointestinal endoscopy to improve procedural quality and patient outcomes.

Brian Goldman

Mount Sinai Hospital

Dr. Brian Goldman is a success in two high pressure fields. He’s an emergency physician at the Schwartz Reisman Emergency Centre at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. He’s also the host of White Coat, Black Art – an award winning show about the culture of modern medicine on CBC Radio One – and the author of the best selling books The Night Shift: Real Life in the Heart of the ER and The Secret Language of Doctors. Goldman is on a mission to make health care safer by addressing unhealthy shame among health professionals. His brave TED talk ‘Doctors Make Mistakes. Can We Talk About That?’ has been viewed more than 1.2 million times.

Kathryn Zander

Patient Partner, UHN

After having a stroke in 2006 at the age of 27, Kathryn has worked to advance a number of issues and causes as a Past President of the Barrie Chapter Council of the Heart and Stroke Foundation and more recently as a Patient Partner with UHN. She is currently the Marketing Director for a generic pharmaceutical agency and advises companies on international growth strategies.

Kira Leeb

Director, Health System Performance, Canadian Institute for Health Information

Kira Leeb joined CIHI in 2000. She held the positions of manager of Health Reports and manager of Health Services Research prior to taking a 22-month secondment at the Health Council of Canada (HCC), where she was manager for health systems monitoring. In the role of Director, Health System Performance at CIHI, Ms. Leeb has directed the Health Indicators portfolio at CIHI including developing the Your Health System suite of web tools. These tools were designed to provide the public, providers and system managers with a comprehensive but parsimonious suite of indicators that measure important aspects of health system performance. Among the many topics of focus for indicator develop, Ms Leeb has led the development and refinement of patient safety indicators. Over the past few years, Ms Leeb, in partnership with representatives across the country, has also led the development of a pan-Canadian acute care patient experience survey that is currently being implemented in several provinces. The hope is that soon patient experiences will also become routinely reported as another important aspect of health system performance.

10:45-11:00 – Break

11:00-12:15 – Industry Panel: Engineering Safety into our Technology

Joseph Cafazzo

Executive Director, Healthcare Human Factors, UHN

Dr. Joseph Cafazzo is the Clinical Core Lead for Design and Engineering at Techna Institute, and leads the Healthcare Human Factors team and the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at University Health Network (UHN).

As Executive Director and Founder of Healthcare Human Factors, he leads his team of thirty human factors professionals design and evaluate health technologies from within a healthcare setting. As the largest group of its kind, the team performs academic research and human factors evaluation and design services for private companies and public institutions, including national and provincial governmental agencies, start-ups and multi-national companies, product manufacturers, and clinical patient safety leaders.

Dr. Cafazzo is also Lead at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, a state-of-the-art research facility devoted to the evaluation and design of healthcare technology, hosting seventy researchers and staff. Dr. Cafazzo has been an active researcher of the use of technology to facilitate patient self-care of complex chronic conditions such as diabetes, end-stage renal disease, and congestive heart failure.

He is also Senior Director of Medical Engineering at the University Health Network, where he is responsible for the entire life cycle of medical technology for the health system. At the University of Toronto, Dr. Cafazzo is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, where he teaches and conducts research in the areas of clinical engineering, human factors, and health informatics. He is a recipient of the Career Scientist award by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.

David Gilmore

Director of User Experience Design, Elekta

David is Elekta’s Director of User Experience Design and has been studying and designing new products for people for over 35 years. His portfolio ranges from coinage and push chairs to home healthcare PCs and pharmaceutical research equipment, as well as underwater vehicles, power plant control systems and marine automation. His primary background is psychology and human factors with an overriding concern for ensuring that products are designed around realistic models of how people think and act.

David had a small role in the setting up of the UK aviation Confidential Hazardous Incident Reporting Procedure System (CHIRPS) in 1980 and is a great believer in the need to monitor and track near misses in order to prevent more serious incidents from occurring. He is acutely aware that known and understood human frailties are still involved too often and that the learnings from such systems (e.g. ROILS) must be fed back into product design, and not only user training and procedures.

David has almost 50 published papers and books – mainly on human-computer interaction and human factors – as well as a handful of patents (on health monitoring) and was Technical Chair for the ACM SIGCHI conference (on Human Factors in Computing Systems) in 2007.

Shawn Oconnell

Director, Medical Affairs, B. Braun Medical Inc.

Shawn O’Connell, MS, Director of Medical Affairs B.Braun Medical Inc. Shawn is the Director of Medical Affairs for B. Braun Medical. She is responsible for the clinical development of infusion devices and drug library software, and leads B. Braun’s Human Factors testing initiatives for all products. She has developed clinical services to support healthcare organizations in their drug library development and medication error reduction initiatives. Prior to joining B. Braun Shawn had 25 years of Critical Care, Nursing Leadership, and Supply Chain experience. Her clinical experience in Critical Care includes Pulmonary, Cardiac, Neurosurgical, Transplant and Burn Care. She was a Clinical Nurse Specialist and Senior Director of Critical Care at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Shawn’s experience also includes 4 years as Director of Nursing for the Premier GPO, where she managed the clinical evaluation and contracting process for medical-surgical and pediatric products as well as the IV fluid and pump portfolio. Shawn received her BS in Nursing from Niagara University and her MS in Nursing from Rush University.

Brian Lasiuk

General Manager Global Technologies, GE Healthcare

Brian Lasiuk is the Chief Technology Officer of the Anesthesia and Respiratory Care (ARC) business within GE Healthcare (GEHC). Brian holds a PhD in Physics from UCLA and has spent his career in research and development of detector technologies in both academic and industrial settings. He has developed systematic methodologies to reduce the cost of quality in systems across multiple industries including Healthcare. The quality and reliability of products is intimately linked to the safe and effective deployment of technology. New capabilities of data analytics provide an opportunity to use real time feedback to evolve trusted methods and processes to improve the safety and effectiveness of medical devices.

David Ferguson

Global Marketing, Fluid Systems, Baxter Healthcare

David currently serves as the GM/Global Franchise Head for the Fluid Systems business at Baxter Healthcare Corporation. In this role he is responsible for a $2.3B global business operating in more than 65 countries. The Fluid Systems business is focused on IV therapy and consists of IV solutions, infusion pumps, disposable ambulatory infusion pumps, disposable IV administration sets and related products. David is responsible for the long term growth strategy including new product introduction, business development, portfolio management, capacity and allocation planning, capital investment recommendations, and financial performance of the business.

Prior his current role David held multiple roles at Baxter Healthcare in the global marketing function including Vice President of Global Marketing for infusion devices where he lead successful product launches of vascular access devices and infusion pumps resulting in significant growth for the portfolio category at Baxter. Before joining Baxter, David spent 9+ years at GE Healthcare in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging business. At GE David held senior positions in Engineering where he served both a functional leader for systems engineering and a segment leader for high-field imaging, leading the launch of several successful new products. David also held strategic marketing and business roles at GE including as the Product Leader/GM of the $1B Premium MR segment.

David holds a B.S. degree in Biochemistry from David Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX

12:15-12:30 – Techna Journey

David Jaffray

Executive Vice President, Technology & Innovation, UHN; Director, Techna Institute, UHN

Dr. David Jaffray graduated from the University of Alberta with a B.Sc. in Physics (Hons.) in 1988 and completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Western Ontario in 1994. Following graduation, he took a position as Staff Physicist in the Department of Radiation Oncology at William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan where he instigated a direction of research that garnered funding from the NIH and from congressionally-directed funding programs. Dr. Jaffray became a Board Certified Medical Physicist (ABMP – Radiation Oncology) in 1999. In 2002, Dr. Jaffray joined the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto as Head of Radiation Physics and a Senior Scientist within the Ontario Cancer Institute. David holds the Fidani Chair in Radiation Physics, is the Director of the Techna Institute for Health Technology Development at the University Health Network and recently became the Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation at the University Health Network. He is a Professor in the Departments of Radiation Oncology, Medical Biophysics, and Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. His primary area of research has been in the development and application of image-guided therapy. He has over 5 patents issued and several licensed, including, kilovoltage cone-beam computed tomography for image-guided radiation therapy. Dr. Jaffray has >200 peer-reviewed publications in the field, >100 invited lectures, and holds numerous peer-review and industry sponsored research grants. He sits on numerous scientific and research boards and has contributed to the NIH and CIHR grant review process for several years. He is an active member of the AAPM and teaching role in workshops and annual meeting of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). He has an active interest in commercialization and led the development of a variety of commercial products including software and hardware for QA and the development of small animal irradiator systems for basic research. He has successfully supervised over 20 graduate students and fellows.

Dr. Jaffray has won each of the major prizes in the field of the medical physics, including, the Sylvia Sorkin-Greenfield Award, The Farrington Daniels Award, and the Sylvia Fedoruk Award. In 2004, Dr. Jaffray was identified as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 and was recognized by The University of Western Ontario with their Young Alumni Award in 2004. His current research interests focus on the development of imaging technologies and methods with a focus on image-guided interventions, including radiation therapy, drug delivery, and surgery.

12:30-1:15 – Lunch

1:15-2:00 – Safety at the Front Lines: Decision Making and Behaviour

Emily Musing

Executive Director of Pharmacy, Clinical Risk and Quality, UHN

Emily Musing is the Executive Director of Pharmacy, Clinical Risk and Quality and Patient Safety Officer at the University Health Network. She received her bachelor of science in pharmacy from the University of Toronto and her master’s of health science in health administration from the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto. Emily is a certified health executive with the Canadian College of Health Leaders and a fellow with the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists. She is an associate professor with the Faculty of Pharmacy, has an adjunct appointment with the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation, and is an affiliate faculty member of the Centre for Patient Safety, University of Toronto. She is a board member of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, and has been previously the vice chair of the Death Investigation Oversight Council reporting to the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and a board member of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, Canada.

Shannon Sayles

Senior Manager, Press Ganey Associates, Inc., HPI

Shannon Sayles is a Senior Manager with HPI. She led the implementation of the safety and performance excellence culture at Sentara Healthcare, an integrated delivery system in southeastern Virginia. In this role she collaborated with and provided guidance to system and operational leaders in implementing behavior-based approaches for error prevention, state of the art event analysis and other safety strategies such as crew resource management. These efforts received national recognition for Sentara with the 2004 American Hospital Association Quest for Quality Prize, the 2005 JCAHO John M Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award and the 2007 VIPC&S Patient Safety Award. She has over 30 years of leadership experience in healthcare, including over 15 years in performance improvement in both hospitals and health plans. In addition to a clinical master’s degree, she has completed a master’s degree in organizational development. Her thesis on sustaining improvement in patient safety was recognized for excellence by the Fielding Graduate University. Shannon holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the Georgetown University School of Nursing, a Master of Science in Rehabilitation Nursing from Boston University School of Nursing, and a Master of Arts in Organizational Development from Fielding Graduate University. She is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt by the Juran Institute.

Teodor Grantcharov

St. Michael’s Hospital

Dr. Teodor Grantcharov completed his surgical training at the University of Copenhagen, and a doctoral degree in Medical Sciences at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Dr. Grantcharov is a staff surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital and a Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Simulation and Surgical Safety.

Dr. Grantcharov’s clinical interest is the area of minimally invasive surgery, with a focus on foregut disease including cancer and revisional bariatric surgery. Dr. Grantcharov’s area of academic interest is in the field of minimally invasive surgery, surgical education and patient safety. He has become internationally recognized as a leader in this area with a focus on curriculum design, assessment of competence and impact of surgical performance on clinical outcomes. Dr. Grantcharov developed the surgical black box concept, which aims to transform the safety culture in medicine and introduce modern safety management systems in the high-risk operating room environment.

Dr. Grantcharov has more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and more than 130 invited presentations in Europe, South- and North America. He sits on numerous committees with The American College of Surgeons (ACS), The Society of the American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), and The Association for Surgical Education (ASE). He sits on the Editorial Boards of The British Journal of Surgery and Surgical Endoscopy.

2:00-2:45 – Debate: Revisiting Checklists

Patricia Trbovich

UHN

Patricia Trbovich, Badeau Family Research Chair in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement at North York General Hospital, is Associate Professor of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation and in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where she leads the HumanEra team. She is also an Affiliate Scientist within Techna at the University Health Network.

Her areas of expertise include human factors engineering and patient safety. She has made significant contributions to research through evaluations of medical technology such as smart infusion pumps, and has offered evidence-based recommendations regarding their implementation in the health system. Her research program aims to develop a fundamental understanding of how to design IT to support high order cognitive functions while striking a balance between automation and human operation. She has also conducted extensive research on mitigation of interruptions on delivery of high-risk medical procedures.

Dr. Trbovich has received funding for her field evaluation and Human Factors Engineering research through various national granting agencies including the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI). She is collaborating with Brazilian colleagues on a research grant to introduce human factors engineering in Brazil. She is also collaborating with the University Marques de Valdecilla, a public hospital, located in Santander, Cantabria, Spain on a joint research and training program.

David Urbach

UHN

David Urbach is Chief of Surgery at Women’s College Hospital, and Professor of Surgery and Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at The University of Toronto. His clinical practice is devoted to gastrointestinal and endocrine surgical oncology and minimally invasive surgery, with a focus on: foregut surgery, laparoscopic and robotic colorectal surgery, adrenal surgery, and obesity surgery. He is a Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), and Head of the Research Division of Support, Systems and Outcomes at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. His research program focuses on surgery-related health services research, including measurement of the quality and outcomes of surgical care, and methods for the evaluation of surgery and other health technologies.

Chris Hayes

St. Michael’s Hospital

Christopher Hayes, MD, MSc, MEd, a 2013-14 Canadian Harkness/IHI Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, has been at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto since 2005, where he is the critical care response team site director and the medical director of quality and performance. He is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Medicine and the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He is a core faculty member of the IHMPE Masters in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety and Improvement Advisor and Faculty with the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement. From 2008 to 2015, he was the medical officer for the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, where he chaired the Canadian Safe Surgery Saves Lives program. He is a recognized leader in patient safety and quality improvement, working with regional, national, and international organizations.

2:45-3:15 – Reaction Panel

Patricia Trbovich

UHN

Patricia Trbovich, Badeau Family Research Chair in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement at North York General Hospital, is Associate Professor of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation and in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where she leads the HumanEra team. She is also an Affiliate Scientist within Techna at the University Health Network.

Her areas of expertise include human factors engineering and patient safety. She has made significant contributions to research through evaluations of medical technology such as smart infusion pumps, and has offered evidence-based recommendations regarding their implementation in the health system. Her research program aims to develop a fundamental understanding of how to design IT to support high order cognitive functions while striking a balance between automation and human operation. She has also conducted extensive research on mitigation of interruptions on delivery of high-risk medical procedures.

Dr. Trbovich has received funding for her field evaluation and Human Factors Engineering research through various national granting agencies including the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI). She is collaborating with Brazilian colleagues on a research grant to introduce human factors engineering in Brazil. She is also collaborating with the University Marques de Valdecilla, a public hospital, located in Santander, Cantabria, Spain on a joint research and training program.

Fayez Quereshy

UHN

Dr. Fayez A. Quereshy is a Surgical Oncologist and Minimally Invasive Surgeon at the University Health Network and is an active member of the Princess Margaret Cancer Program. His specialty interest focuses in gastrointestinal malignancies and specifically, colorectal cancer. Dr. Quereshy completed his residency training in General Surgery, and his fellowship in Surgical Oncology, at the University of Toronto. He received his Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) at the Rotman School of Management. He subsequently pursued advanced Robotic Colorectal Fellowship training at the Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong. His academic interests center on operations management and systems efficiency, with the aim of improving cost effectiveness and quality of care. Dr. Quereshy is the Medical Director of the Operating Room at the Toronto Western Hospital and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto.

Bob Bell

Deputy Minister of Health and Long-Term Care

Dr. Robert Bell was appointed Deputy Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, effective June 2, 2014. Prior to this role, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of University Health Network for nine years. He was previously the Chief Operating Officer at Princess Margaret Hospital and Chair of both Cancer Care Ontario’s Clinical Council and the Cancer Quality Council of Ontario.

Dr. Bell received his Doctor of Medicine from McGill University and a Master of Science from the University of Toronto. He also completed a Fellowship in Orthopaedic Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University. Dr. Bell is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the American College of Surgeons and an Honourary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. An internationally recognized orthopedic surgeon, health care executive, clinician-scientist, and educator, Dr. Bell brings more than 30 years of health care experience to his current role.

Sharon Rogers

Senior Director Patient Relations, UHN

Sharon Rogers has been the Ombudsman at the University Health Network since November 1993. The University Health Network is comprised of the Princess Margaret Hospital, the Toronto Western Hospital, the Toronto General Hospital and all five sites of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.

Over the years the department and the role has evolved from ‘the complaints department’ to an Ombudsman role. The scope of practice focuses really at two levels: the first is to try to support the patient through the system when issues arise and to bring about a consensually derived and satisfactory resolution to patient concerns. The second level of practice is to take the learnings from each and every patient encounter, gather data and develop trends that speak to patient experience and to use that knowledge to advocate for system change.

Sharon’s background as a clinician in dentistry, a teacher at U of T and her training in alternate dispute resolution have been most helpful in this role.

3:10-3:15 – Closing Remarks

David Jaffray

Executive Vice President, Technology & Innovation, UHN; Director, Techna Institute, UHN

Dr. David Jaffray graduated from the University of Alberta with a B.Sc. in Physics (Hons.) in 1988 and completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Western Ontario in 1994. Following graduation, he took a position as Staff Physicist in the Department of Radiation Oncology at William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan where he instigated a direction of research that garnered funding from the NIH and from congressionally-directed funding programs. Dr. Jaffray became a Board Certified Medical Physicist (ABMP – Radiation Oncology) in 1999. In 2002, Dr. Jaffray joined the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto as Head of Radiation Physics and a Senior Scientist within the Ontario Cancer Institute. David holds the Fidani Chair in Radiation Physics, is the Director of the Techna Institute for Health Technology Development at the University Health Network and recently became the Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation at the University Health Network. He is a Professor in the Departments of Radiation Oncology, Medical Biophysics, and Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. His primary area of research has been in the development and application of image-guided therapy. He has over 5 patents issued and several licensed, including, kilovoltage cone-beam computed tomography for image-guided radiation therapy. Dr. Jaffray has >200 peer-reviewed publications in the field, >100 invited lectures, and holds numerous peer-review and industry sponsored research grants. He sits on numerous scientific and research boards and has contributed to the NIH and CIHR grant review process for several years. He is an active member of the AAPM and teaching role in workshops and annual meeting of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). He has an active interest in commercialization and led the development of a variety of commercial products including software and hardware for QA and the development of small animal irradiator systems for basic research. He has successfully supervised over 20 graduate students and fellows.

Dr. Jaffray has won each of the major prizes in the field of the medical physics, including, the Sylvia Sorkin-Greenfield Award, The Farrington Daniels Award, and the Sylvia Fedoruk Award. In 2004, Dr. Jaffray was identified as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 and was recognized by The University of Western Ontario with their Young Alumni Award in 2004. His current research interests focus on the development of imaging technologies and methods with a focus on image-guided interventions, including radiation therapy, drug delivery, and surgery.