Centre for Healthcare Innovation and Improvement

2003 Research Unit Award

This unit is focused on developing and translating research knowledge into policies and practices that improve health and quality of health care for children, women and their families. It brings together full-time researchers and clinician-researchers with the multidisciplinary skill sets, resources and linkages to identify and address a wide range of health care issues. Research teams, which will include decision-makers, will evaluate specific health issues, design and test interventions for these issues, and then implement and evaluate the effectiveness of ensuing policy and practice changes.

The weakest aspect of health research today is the inability to effectively translate research knowledge into policies and practices that improve health and quality of health care. The Centre for Health Innovation and Improvement (CHII) is dedicated to the improvement of health and health care for children, women and their families through the support and conduct of innovative research into health services policy, practice and outcomes. Their goal is to provide health care agencies, providers and decision makers with the information and tools necessary to take knowledge gained through research and use it to implement policy and practice that changes how health services are delivered.

Located at Children’s & Women’s Health Centre of British Columbia, CHII is designed to bring together researchers and clinician-researchers with different but complementary skills and enable them to collaboratively apply their expertise in clinical, policy and health services research to specific health issues. CHII researchers can take a health care issue, create a team that includes researchers, clinicians and decision makers, evaluate the problem, design and test interventions, implement and evaluate policy and practice changes, and then re-evaluate and make recommendations for quality improvement. To carry out this comprehensive approach to research and the application of research findings, the unit’s research program is organized into three sub-themes concentrated around key technologies or processes fundamental for knowledge generation, translation and transfer – a continuum that is essential for ensuring research translates into improved health and health care.

• Health Informatics: Explores innovative new systems to capture, store, process, interpret and use evidence for improving health and health care.
• Knowledge Translation Methods: Develops rigorous analytic methods to process, analyze and interpret health data to support clinicians and policy makers in making appropriate decisions around practice and policy changes.
• Knowledge Transfer: Supports the development of networks of researchers, clinicians and decision-makers to implement and evaluate practice and policy changes broadly in the health system.

Completed award term September 2009.

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