jjablkowski's blog

When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020, I found myself with unexpected time on my hands as surgeries were cancelled to augment capacity at Vancouver General Hospital in the event of a COVID surge. I leveraged my longstanding research collaboration with UBC engineering sciences and issued a call-to-action with former students, Dr Philip Edgcumbe, a UBC radiology resident and biomedical engineer, and Mr Alex Waslen, a UBC engineering student, to come up with an idea for a low-cost ventilator to address the anticipated worldwide shortage.

Originally called Dominion Day, Canada Day is a statutory holiday that celebrates the unification of three North American British colonies. On 1 July 1867 the British North America Act joined New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Upper and Lower Canada (now the provinces of Ontario and Quebec), creating the unified Dominion of Canada. Today the country is made up of 13 provinces and territories.

Clinics across Canada are facing a problem. Thirty-eight percent of Canadians would rather their first point of contact for a doctor’s advice be over the phone, text, or on a video conference than the traditional in-person visit.[1]

While in-person visits may decrease, with new technology it’s easier than ever to add virtual care to your clinic’s toolbelt. Here are four things to do if you’re considering offering virtual care.

1. Choose a solution
Consider the following when choosing a virtual care provider. 

I love dictionaries. I have at least a dozen different ones, including several medical dictionaries. I cannot even lift my Random House Dictionary of the English Language, and my Canadian Oxford Dictionary is only a bit lighter. My favorite dictionaries are those that explain the origins of words. These include A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Word Origins and their Romantic Stories, and Playboy’s Book of Forbidden Words (which explains, among other things, where the ubiquitous word that starts with F comes from).

Dr Mark Elliott’s article in the BCMJ’s January/February issue is an earnest, simplified, yet still confounding explanation of CRISPR,[1] an emerging genetic manipulation procedure for patients suffering from certain genetic mutations, including sickle cell anemia and thalassemia. The article is meant for nongeneticist physicians who wish to explain to enquiring patients what the CRISPR procedure is, what it can offer, and what are its practical, ethical, and legal limits.