Odette World Health Innovation Network in prime location to succeed

On any given day, multiple students pass through the front doors of the University of Windsor’s Odette School of Business. As they walk through the 24-year-old building, multiple brand logos decorate the walls and floors, enough to catch people’s attention.

Inside the building though, tucked into one of the side hallways, is Room 120. The office space is home to Dr. Anne Snowden, chair of the Odette World Health Innovation Network, who only recently moved into the space. Its past owner’s name is still on the sign outside.

People may be asking themselves: Why have a health innovation network as part of a business school?

“Healthcare is actually one of the largest businesses in the world. It is also the business with the highest growth,” said Snowdon, who teaches undergraduate and master’s students how to lead innovation in health systems at the school. “We don’t traditionally think of it as a business. We think of it as part of a healthcare service for Canadians, but it fact, it’s a very large business and we need business principles and business expertise to help it run more efficiently and more effectively.”

The innovation centre, which launched in July, is a network of researchers and partners from different health systems, all focused on delivering quality healthcare to their respective populations. The network is currently connected to multiple groups, including British Columbia’s Ministry of Health, Dalhousie University and Arizona State University. It’s the first network of its kind to collaborate with both Canadian and U.S. organizations. Prior to coming to the University of Windsor, Snowdon was the chair of the Ivey International Centre for Health Innovation at Western University for five years.

“Odette recruited the team because we’re at a very important geographical area in Windsor. We are on the busiest border crossing in the world,” said Snowdon. “Our two health systems in Canada and the U.S. don’t collaborate very often on how to make our systems work better, but if you are specifically located right under the bridge right at the border, you have a much greater opportunity to build on the work we’ve been doing in Canadian provinces and extend it and accelerate it with U.S. partners.”

Snowdon said each person involved in the network has a certain area of expertise “to better redesign healthcare systems to be more effective and cost less money.” For example, the network is working with ASU for their innovation in supply chain management.

The WHIN’s seven researchers are also sent to where its research and innovation projects are located, some of which are in Halifax, Toronto and Vancouver. The network is currently working on about 15 research projects, including one local project with Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare.

“Healthcare around the world is all becoming very similar … even though people think it’s different, the problems we have are the same problems. Problems associate with people not being able or feeling they’re not able to access the care they require, plus health systems not coping with people of increasing age and complexity of illness,” said Dr. Charles Alessi, an add-on faculty member at Odette and a senior advisor for Public Health England. “Bringing together all this focus in one place is actually quite helpful for all of us all over the world.”

Throughout the summer, three students assisted with the network’s projects. Jon Suckling, who worked on various tasks from doing research to collecting data, said he learned through the centre that it was crucial to have a business background in the healthcare industry.

“I think a lot of the time in research, we have the tendency to be very problem-focused and it was an opportunity to be very solution-focused,” said Suckling, an MBA student at UWindsor. “As you get to dive in deeper into what’s going on in other parts of the world and what’s going on in Canada as well domestically, it’s a really exciting thing to be a part of.”

Snowdon said the WHIN expects to see more projects start in the near future.

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