TELUS Health, McGill announce research partnership

“This partnership will contribute to our effectiveness in generating quantifiable results by allowing us to document patient outcomes from our health IT applications and cutting-edge collaborative services,” said Paul Lepage, President, TELUS Health. “It enables us to gain valuable knowledge and further insights on the impacts of ehealth initiatives from both the clinical and business perspectives on a national level.”

“We are delighted to create a multidisciplinary partnership that promotes participation, collaboration and innovation, with the shared goal of translating advances in technology into transformative improvements in healthcare across Canada,” said Professor Peter Todd, Dean of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.

Putting patients at the centre of innovative and improved healthcare delivery

Through this partnership, the first study receiving funds will focus on understanding how remote health monitoring integrated with a patient health portal can be used to improve the management of complex medical therapy for patients with chronic cardiovascular disease, which affects over three million Canadians.

Widely used in chronic anticoagulant therapy for people living with cardiovascular disease, Warfarin requires close monitoring of patients, who currently must make regular visits to hospitals or clinics. This creates considerable inconvenience for patients, as well as being costly and inefficient. The research project, led by co-Principal Investigators Dr. Ariane Marelli of the Faculty of Medicine and Dr. Yeona Jang of the Desautels Faculty of Management, aims to help improve anticoagulation surveillance, while minimizing hospital visits and engaging the community with a patient-centred solution.

“As our populations age and diseases become increasingly chronic and complex, the healthcare challenges we face are significant,” said Dr. David Eidelman, McGill’s Vice-Principal of Health Affairs and Dean of Medicine. “Collaborations like these are fundamental in harnessing the technology and research by outstanding scientists such as Drs. Jang and Marelli to provide the best care for the people in our communities. We are proud to be partnering with TELUS Health to accelerate these efforts.”

A year ago, TELUS Health announced a similar partnership with the University of Alberta, which focused on consumer health and personal health records. Other joint research projects, designed to support the TELUS provincial centres of excellence and diversity engagement, are expected to take place over the next three years.

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About McGill University and its Faculties of Management and Medicine

Since 1821 McGill University in Montréal has been one of Canada’s leading and most international post-secondary institutions. It is consistently ranked among the world’s top research-intensive universities, with two campuses, 11 faculties, 11 professional schools, 300 programs of study and some 38,000 students from over 150 countries around the world. For over 100 years, the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill has been recognized as one of the top international business schools in the world. The Desautels Faculty of Management emphasizes an integrated and holistic approach to the teaching, research and practice of management. Founded in 1829, the McGill Faculty of Medicine was the first faculty established at the University and the first medical faculty in Canada. Today, McGill is the leading medical research university nationally, and is renowned worldwide for its excellence in the health sciences. The McGill University Business Engagement Centre (MUBEC), which provides a single point of entry for companies seeking to partner with McGill, helped establish the new partnership with TELUS. More on McGill: www.mcgill.ca; more on McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management: www.mcgill.ca/desautels; more on McGill’s Faculty of Medicine: www.mcgill.ca/medicine.

About TELUS Health

TELUS Health is a leader in telehomecare, electronic medical and health records, consumer health, benefits management and pharmacy management. TELUS Health solutions give health authorities, providers, physicians, patients and consumers the power to turn information into better health outcomes. For more information about TELUS Health, please visit telushealth.com.

About TELUS

TELUS (TSX: T, NYSE: TU) is a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, with $10.9 billion of annual revenue and more than 13.1 million customer connections, including 7.7 million wireless subscribers, 3.4 million wireline network access lines, 1.4 million Internet subscribers and 678,000 TELUS TV customers. Led since 2000 by President and CEO, Darren Entwistle, TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services, including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video.

In support of our philosophy to give where we live, TELUS, our team members and retirees have contributed more than $300 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered 4.8 million hours of service to local communities since 2000. Fourteen TELUS Community Boards lead local philanthropic initiatives. TELUS was honoured to be named the most outstanding philanthropic corporation globally for 2010 by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, becoming the first Canadian company to receive this prestigious international recognition. For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com.