Reimagining Acute Care Initiative: Overview
Context
The Reimagining Acute Care Initiative will encourage research designed to address the challenges and systemic gaps in acute care in Canada. The initiative will also support research that aims to transform care through digital innovations. These challenges and opportunities are detailed below.
High-Burden Conditions
Canada is currently facing major acute care challenges characterized by severe hospital overcrowding, caused by inadequate primary and long-term care access and exacerbated by our growing aging demographic and increasing prevalence of multimorbidity, leading to substantial health expenditures. Acute and critical care conditions affecting the heart, brain (stroke), lung, blood, blood vessels, and sleep are all relevant to ICRH’s mandate. Together, these conditions impact Canada’s health outcomes and health systems in many ways:
- Account for approximately one third (1/3) of all deaths
- Lead to 4 of the 10 most expensive hospitalizations
- Constitute 4 of the top 5 reasons for hospital stays
- Include Ambulatory Care Sensitive conditions, for which hospitalizations are avoidable with timely and effective pre-acute care
Fragmented Care and Research
Care in Canada is delivered through different phases and by different entities of the healthcare system. While acute care is delivered in hospitals, pre-acute and post-acute care are delivered in different settings, such as primary care clinics, home or community care. This fragmentation may lead to discontinuity and inefficiencies, such as:
- Disconnected pre-acute, acute and post-acute phases and settings
- Compartmentalized care specialties, centered around diseases or organ systems
- Siloed research and research funding, structured by fields and disciplines
- Uncoordinated transition in care
New possibilities with Data & Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Advances in AI, data science, and digital health infrastructure in Canada are creating new opportunities to integrate, analyze and use health data and improve decision‑making. To seize the full potential of these emerging technologies, we must:
- Promote the use and sharing of health data
- Harmonize data and ensure representation of Canada’s diverse populations.
- Develop solid data governance and management guidelines
- Facilitate cross-jurisdictional collaborations
- Mobilize the expertise and increase capacity
- Foster the development of national clinical trials networks and platforms
Purpose
Supporting innovative interdisciplinary research across the care continuum to transform acute care and improve health outcomes for people living in Canada.
Objectives
Connect
Strengthen collaboration across the phases of the care continuum, fields, disciplines, and pillars of health research while mobilizing researchers, clinicians, policymakers, peoples with lived and living experience, and communities to drive integrated, innovative and equitable acute care research and delivery from discovery to implementation.
Build
Support research capacity and infrastructure while generating the evidence and tools needed to enable and catalyze high‑impact research and system transformation across the care continuum.
Scale
Leverage existing resources and steward the research community in the development, dissemination and implementation of successful research findings at the national and international levels.
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