News
BBDC Developing a
Long-term Vision and Strategy
December 1, 2011
As previously announced, in late August this year the
BBDC
retained the professional consulting company SECOR to assist in an
intensive planning process that will be completed by December 2011.
Dr. Zayna Khayat and Lauren Vandervoort
from SECOR performed well over 70 interviews with
BBDC members and key stakeholders
including: directors of the U of T academic hospital research
institutes; the Dean and Vice Dean of Research, Faculty of Medicine, U
of T; Ministry of Health personnel and leadership responsible for the
Ontario Diabetes Strategy; key diabetes scientists, educators and
opinion leaders in Canada; the leadership of ICES and AHRC of the Li Ka
Shing Knowledge Institute; Director of the Canadian Diabetes
Association; and personnel working on the Diabetes fundraising campaigns
on behalf of the Toronto General Foundation and U of T.
They also performed an extensive environmental scan of other
academic diabetes institutes and centers across the globe, and drew upon
the firm’s extensive experiences working with academic collaborative
research enterprises. The
planning process culminated recently in a highly successful, half-day
retreat held at the U of T Faculty Club, a retreat designed to develop a
shared view of the long-range vision and strategy for the
BBDC. The SECOR team met weekly with the
BBDC
Director to review the ideas, cautionary messages and general comments
of the interviewees and together with the very extensive input received
at the retreat are in the final stages of developing a long-range vision
for the Centre.
The final plan, once approved by the BBDC
Executive, will very likely represent a radical expansion of
BBDC
programs with a bold vision for the future.
We continue to provide assurance that the priority that the BBDC places on supporting the training of under- and
postgraduate diabetes scientists will remain our highest priority for
use of our presently available funds, which will not be shifted to newer
priorities. Any expansion of programs will have to occur with the
acquisition of new funding.
We highlight here three of the ~10 ideas that have emerged through this
process, and rationale behind those ideas:
- We have much to gain from developing
research themes and programs,
with multidisciplinary clusters of scientists working in close
collaboration, and in collaboration with researchers in other
disciplines across U of T.
These themes have been identified in the planning process
using a set of predefined criteria and based on our existing
research strength. The
funding agencies such as CIHR are moving towards an Integrated
Knowledge Translation (IKT) approach, CFI grants are awarded to
teams working on cutting edge research topics and our fundraising
from philanthropic donors and industry is highly dependent on our
ability to interest and excite donors with cutting-edge ideas that
can make an impact on specific diseases.
It is essential that we organized ourselves into these
programs and work together since it will become more and more
difficult over time for the 20th century-style
‘independent investigator’ to continue to remain competitive if
working in isolation.
- Despite the fact that we have some highly successful individual
diabetes clinical trialists in
Toronto, the
BBDC has not
traditionally had a strong track record in
clinical trials and clinical research.
We are currently punching way below our weight in this
important area of research.
Instead of building parallel infrastructure at enormous expense we
have the full support of the Li Ka Shing Applied Health Research
Centre (AHRC) and the clinical trials platform recently created by
our colleagues in the Division of Cardiology at U of T.
With the full support of their leadership, this will allow us
to leapfrog over many hurdles, and to much more rapidly become
leaders in diabetes clinical trials.
- In addition to the research prowess of U of T faculty, our
faculty contains some of the finest teachers, educators and
innovators in the field of health care policy, knowledge translation
and health care delivery. It
will in no way dilute our fundamental research capability for the
BBDC to become a
Centre for Innovation in Diabetes Disease Care and Education.
In fact we found tremendous enthusiasm amongst our existing
membership for expanding our programs in this arena and have already
linked up with others in the U of T community who are much more
advanced than us in their development of exciting programs in
Quality Improvement Science, Global Health, e-Health innovation,
Complex Care Innovation and other areas of Knowledge Translation.
The Canadian Diabetes Association is interested in partnering
with us in some of these ventures and we will also look outside U of
T to partner with others who are working in these areas, such as
those at
York
University and
at UWO. There is a big gap in this area to be filled by an academic
Centre such as the
BBDC.
The above is just an
exciting taste of what you are likely to see when we present our more
detailed and specific long range vision and plan to you within the next
few months.
Sincerely,
Gary Lewis, MD
Director, Banting & Best Diabetes Centre