10 LIFESAVING INNOVATIONS COMING TO A HOSPITAL NEAR YOU

How health-care workers and institutions are revolutionizing surgery, patient care, cancer treatment—and more

- Lauren McGill

THE TRAUMA ROOM BLACK BOX

Emergency-room doctors are not so different from the rest of us: they learn best from their own mistakes. But memories aren’t perfect—especially in high-stress situations—and the speed and complexity of what happens in a trauma room can make it hard to recall exact details. To remedy that, the trauma team at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto decided to take a cue from the aviation industry. They installed a black box in their trauma room, allowing them to later pinpoint an exact time when things went right—or started to fall apart.

“This is about reimagining trauma resuscitation so we can get factual feedback on performance,” says Dr. Chris Hicks, trauma physician who helped lead the project. The black box can record everything that happens using 360-degree cameras, wall-mounted microphones and connections to the patient’s vital signs. Once the team finishes working on a patient, doctors can review everything that happened—arming themselves with the skill and knowledge to work on the next trauma patient and, hopefully, save another life.

THE RISE OF TELEHEALTH

Virtual health care has steadily gained traction in Canada since 2015, when Toronto emergency-room physician Brett Belchetz founded Maple, the country’s first national telemedicine platform. Three years later, Canadians completed over one million telehealth consultations—a 500 per cent jump in less than a decade. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has further increased remote visits. In 2020, Maple added more than a million new patients and its consultation volumes tripled.