Cardiac Services BC supports leading research and helps put research findings into action to improve patient care and the BC health system.
BC is emerging as a global leader in heart health research, which is carried out in hospitals, research institutes and universities around the province. While Cardiac Services BC does not directly conduct research, we contribute by bringing data resources, analytical and epidemiological expertise and health system perspective to cardiac research projects.
At the heart of our research support role is the HEARTis system. HEARTis houses multi-year cardiac data on close to 100 variables related to wait times, procedure safety and effectiveness, clinical processes and patient outcomes for procedures funded by Cardiac Services BC across the province. This rich data resource, along with our large data, analytics and epidemiology team, is available to researchers studying many different aspects of heart health and cardiac services.
As a provincial organization, Cardiac Services BC supports large research groups to study significant areas of heart health and cardiac care. We partner with the
Canadian Stroke Prevention Intervention Network (C-SPIN) and the
Canadian Arrhythmia Network (CANet).
We bring a health system perspective to our research partnerships. Our involvement in the development of research initiatives helps ensure that projects aim for health system change as well as clinical innovation. We also advocate for the study of BC-specific cardiac care issues.
Cardiac Services BC also has an important role to play the final stage of research: the translation of research knowledge into practice. We are able to bring together the results of landmark research trials with our evaluation of the BC environment to investigate variation between sites, implement best practices and improve the cardiac care system provincially.
