Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research joins national partnership supporting the Evidence-Informed Healthcare Renewal Portal

Open, online resource provides a wealth of health care renewal information to share best practices and innovations

For immediate release –

2013-22

Vancouver, British Columbia (May 30, 2013) – As the health services and policy research community gathers for the 2013 Canadian Association of Health Services and Policy Research Conference in Vancouver, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is pleased to announce that the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR) has joined the national partnership supporting the Evidence-Informed Healthcare Renewal (EIHR) Portal.

The EIHR Portal provides health system policy makers and stakeholders in Canada with access to a wealth of reliable evidence for health care renewal. It is supported through a partnership between federal, provincial and territorial governments and leading organizations in the health care community and permits knowledge sharing across the country.

"Our Government understands the importance of having access to reliable evidence to make decisions that affect the health services available to Canadians," says the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health. "This web portal is a unique collaborative effort that will help provinces and territories and other stakeholders share information, innovations and best practices to strengthen health care in Canada.”

The EIHR Portal is an easily accessible, searchable, and continuously-updated repository of policy-relevant documents that broadly addresses the subject of health care renewal in Canada. The content includes contributions from health policy decision-makers and researchers and addresses priority areas, such as primary health care, patient safety and performance indicators from across the country. The EIHR Portal is managed by the McMaster Health Forum and CIHR.

MSFHR, which supports health research in British Columbia, is among 19 organizations supporting the EIHR Portal. The partners represent federal, provincial and territorial governments and other health care stakeholders.

“Knowledge translation is an important priority for the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, so supporting the EIHR Portal is a natural fit for us,” says Dr. Diane Finegood, president and CEO of MSFHR. “The Portal will provide not only an opportunity to learn from our colleagues in other jurisdictions but a mechanism for BC-based policy researchers to share knowledge from the many health system improvement projects currently underway in BC.”

The partnership now spans the country from BC to Atlantic Canada and the North, providing a valuable mechanism for sharing information, innovations and best practices in health care.

The EIHR Portal was developed under CIHR’s Roadmap Signature Initiative on Evidence-Informed Healthcare Renewal. The initiative is designed to bring researchers and decision-makers together to advance the current state of knowledge, generate novel and creative solutions and translate evidence for uptake into policy and practice to strengthen Canada’s health care systems.

“The EIHR Portal is designed to serve the needs of health care decision-makers who need evidence to help them address challenges they face in delivering high quality health care,” says Dr. Robyn Tamblyn, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research. “We are pleased to be working with partners across the country who are deeply committed to ensuring the sustainability of Canada’s health care system.”

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Backgrounder

Further information:

David Coulombe
CIHR Media Relations
613-941-4563
Cell: 613-808-7526

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the Government of Canada's health research investment agency. CIHR's mission is to create new scientific knowledge and to enable its translation into improved health, more effective health services and products, and a strengthened health care system for Canadians. Composed of 13 Institutes, CIHR provides leadership and support to more than 14,100 health researchers and trainees across Canada.

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