No more siloed medicine: The Schroeder BRAIN&HEART Centre at St. Michael’s is pushing the frontiers of integrated care.
The Schroeder Foundation has made a landmark investment of $22.125 million to establish The Schroeder BRAIN&HEART Centre at St. Michael’s Hospital, and usher in a new era of integrated precision medicine.
St. Michael’s is a pioneer in brain and heart care, with an impressive track record of national and world firsts in surgical innovation. The surgeons and physicians there are leaders in minimally-invasive, image-guided techniques, and they are giving people facing the toughest brain and heart challenges options for treatment they never had before, and enabling these patients to recover more quickly, with less pain, and less time spent in hospital. They are, quite simply, giving people back their quality of life – and saving lives.
The experts there also know that the conventional approach to treating brain, heart and vascular disorders as separate is outmoded. Brain and heart are interconnected – what happens in one often affects the other. The vision for The Schroeder BRAIN&HEART Centre is to create a hub for collaboration among these specialists that will revolutionize brain and heart care.
The Schroeder BRAIN&HEART Centre, led by renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Mark Peterson, has been opening in phases, with full completion scheduled for the latter half of 2021. Funds from the Foundation are supporting the physical transformation of clinical spaces, including larger, state-of-the-art, technologically advanced catheterization labs and a multidisciplinary clinic, a one-stop shop for integrated and holistic care. But that’s not all. Three Schroeder research chairs – in advanced neurovascular interventions, in structural and valve intervention, and for the Centre’s director – will allow St. Michael’s to recruit and support trailblazing and rising star surgeon-scientists, giving them dedicated time to devise new ways of providing inventive, best-in-class care. And The Schroeder Institute for Cardiac and Aortic Surgery will design and test new coordinated care pathways for patients, and train surgical fellows in the range of open, endovascular and hybrid surgical techniques.
As the knowledge and expertise developed in Toronto will be shared around the world, The Schroeder BRAIN&HEART Centre promises to be a catalyst for health-care innovation on a global scale.
Donations can be made directly to: Brain & Heart Care – St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation (stmichaelsfoundation.com)
