The new vice-president of research for both Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute is hoping that a stronger focus on research will help transform this northwestern Ontario city's hospital into a leading academic medical centre.
Michael Wood, who started his new position in August, sees himself largely as an "integrator" in his dual role. Wood said his newly created job involves integrating research across a broad community, building a "critical mass" of high-quality researchers at the research institute, and helping to create a culture that embraces research in the health sciences centre as it transitions from a community hospital into a medical centre with an academic focus.
"What I will regard as success in a few years is for research to be deeply integrated into the different services that the hospital provides, and for research to be regarded as a driver for the growth of these programs," said Wood. "Success will also take the form of people coming to see research as part of their natural way of caring for patients."
Wood said health-care workers have been conducting ad hoc pockets of research for a long time at the hospital, and the research institute will work to integrate those pockets into a strategic direction. The institute is focusing on three main themes: the development of advanced detection devices, the search for biomarkers, and imaging guided interventions.
Niche
"Our objective is to make research one of the drivers that transforms the hospital into a leading academic medical centre," he said. "For us to be successful, we will have to carve out a very narrow niche that we do better than anyone else in the world."
Wood, born and raised in Montreal, said uses for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) stretch across the health-care field.
"The MRI field is going to keep expanding," he said. "It has endless possibilities."
It can help to avoid invasive surgical procedures, aid in guiding interventions, and help identify biomarkers or indicators of disease.
Wood earned his Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University in 1982, with honours in Physics and an extra year in Immunology. Four years later, he was awarded his doctorate from the University of Toronto's (U of T) Department of Medical Biophysics through an interdisciplinary program with emphasis on the molecular biology, imaging and treatment of cancer. In 1999, he earned an MBA from the U of T's Rotman School of Management.
Before taking on the new challenge in Thunder Bay, Wood worked in global research and product management at GE Healthcare in Milwaukee for nine years. Prior to that, he worked in clinical development at Cedara Software, a healthcare IT company in Mississauga, and was a professor and research director at the U of T and affiliated hospitals. He held the position of research director at the U of T's Department of Medical Imaging and served as a physicist and assistant professor at Tufts University/New England Medical Center in Boston.
Wood has authored and co-authored 63 publications and 158 abstracts on the development of MRI techniques and their neurological and cardiovascular applications.
Wood said he heard about the job in Thunder Bay from a colleague and became interested in the position after learning more about the potential of the research institute.
Opportunity
"I came to Thunder Bay because of the opportunity to build a research program. I was impressed with the parameters that will make this a success in Thunder Bay," he said. "I suspect its remote location has encouraged people to collaborate."
One of the directions for growth of the research institute involves forming partnerships with medical companies.
"I was attracted to this opportunity in Thunder Bay because I have a hybrid experience in academia and the outside world," he said. "I have some understanding of how companies work and how the community outside a hospital operates."
Wood now lives on the north shore of Lake Superior with his wife, Dr. Margaret Sweet, a clinical vascular neurologist who also works at TBRHSC, and their six-year-old son David.
"What made it easier to accept this position was that the hospital at the same time was looking for a neurologist," he said. "It made it a lot easier to leave Milwaukee and come to Thunder Bay knowing that both my wife and I had interesting career opportunities here."
He said he is looking forward to winter outdoor activities and has already signed up at a local ski hill.
"People here have been exceptionally friendly. I think it will be a very pleasant place to get to know."
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Brigitte Petersen is a freelance journalist based in Thunder Bay.
