Ford government moving more hip and knee surgeries into private clinics
Just days after announcing an expansion of CT scans and endoscopies at 57 surgical and diagnostic centres granted licences as part of a
plan by Premier Doug Ford's government
to provide more community health care, Health Minister Sylvia Jones issued a call for proposals from clinics Wednesday.
'We're working to deliver even more connected and convenient care for people,' Jones said in a statement.
Ontario is expanding privately run surgical and diagnostic centres to deliver MRI and CT scans
Liberal MPP Adil Shamji (Don Valley East), an emergency room physician and his party's health critic, said the government should only be outsourcing medical procedures from hospitals to not-for-profit clinics — to avoid a 'wild, wild west for essentially any vendor to come in and offer to do these surgeries.'
He pointed to a data breach last week at Ontario's home-care agency — whose previous chief executive officer was fired months ago over a medical supply shortage — as a reason for caution.
Ontario Health atHome CEO Cynthia Martineau was terminated Tuesday, following reports that home
'As we've seen with Ontario Health atHome and the home care hush-up, the government cannot be trusted to identify new vendors, monitor them and ensure that they deliver quality services with appropriate oversight and guardrails.'
About 200,000 home-care patients had their health information breached March 17 via a cyberattack at Ontario Health atHome vendor Ontario Medical Supply — a privately run company. Patient names, contact information and medical supplies and equipment ordered were exposed in the breach.
It exposes vulnerable patients to identity theft, bank and other frauds, and reveals sensitive medical information, Shamji said, calling for people impacted to be offered creditor monitoring.
'People weren't informed until I forced the issue ... it should have happened immediately,' Shamji added, referring to a news conference he held last Friday.
Ontario Health atHome has since issued an advisory to patients that says the breach has been reported to Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner and noted an investigation is underway. Patients with concerns can call 1-866-377-7567.
Shamji and other critics have said moving more medical procedures out of hospitals into community-based clinics could bleed the public health system of doctors, nurses and other resources at a time when patients face long waits in emergency rooms.
They also fear patients will be pressured at privately run clinics to pay for extras not covered by OHIP, although the government states 'no centre can refuse an insured service to a patient who chooses not to purchase uninsured upgrades.'
There are more than 900 private clinics providing medical services such as X-rays and blood tests in the province as has been the case for decades under Progressive Conservative, Liberal and New Democrat governments.
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Business Wire
9 hours ago
- Business Wire
QT Imaging Bolsters Medical and Clinical Leadership with Senior Appointments to Further Drive Innovation and Clinical Adoption
NOVATO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QT Imaging Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: QTIH), a medical device company engaged in research, development, and commercialization of innovative body imaging systems, is pleased to announce the appointments of Elaine Iuanow, MD, as Chief Medical Officer ('CMO') and Kim Du as Senior Director of Clinical Operations. These additions to the leadership team significantly enhance the Company's medical and clinical capabilities as QTI expands its clinical studies as well as the development of AI-driven lesion classification and second-read decision support tools alongside the commercialization of its FDA-cleared QTI Breast Acoustic CT™ scanner. 'On behalf of the entire team, I'm thrilled to welcome Elaine and Kim to QT Imaging,' said Dr. Raluca Dinu, CEO of QTI. 'They bring deep clinical expertise and leadership that will be critical as we enter our next chapter: expanding our evidence base, driving reimbursement, and transforming QTI into a precision imaging AI company. Their contributions will help us advance not only the clinical adoption of our platform but also a new generation of AI-enhanced diagnostic tools that support improved outcomes, earlier detection, and broader access.' As CMO, Dr. Iuanow will lead clinical strategy and development, regulatory engagement, and external partnerships with thought leaders and institutions, while supporting QTI's broader strategic focus of AI-driven precision imaging and diagnostic innovation. A board-certified radiologist with more than two decades of experience in women's health, breast imaging, and academic medicine, Dr. Iuanow has held clinical positions at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Community Radiology Division. She completed her residency at Tufts Medical Center and a breast imaging fellowship at Faulkner-Sagoff/Brigham and Women's Hospital. 'From a patient's perspective, breast imaging should be accurate, comfortable, and stress-free,' said Dr. Iuanow. 'QTI's unique Breast Acoustic CT™ technology combines true 3D anatomical and quantitative imaging with the power of artificial intelligence. It has the potential to become a highly accessible and affordable alternative to MRI—especially for the 50% of U.S. women between 40–74 with dense breast tissue 1. I'm honored to join a team committed to fundamentally improving diagnostic confidence and patient experience.' Dr. Iuanow added: 'With our multi-center, evidence-based clinical trial portfolio, QTI will be studied as an alternative to MRI for imaging high-risk women and for breast cancer management in the neoadjuvant setting, as well as a potential platform for future minimally invasive radiologic treatment of breast cancer. I'm especially excited about the development of AI-driven tools that automate findings classification and deliver consistent second-read decision support.' Ms. Du joins QTI with over fifteen years of medical product development experience. Most recently, she served as Senior Director of Clinical Operations for Avisi Technologies, a clinical-stage ophthalmic device company. Prior to Avisi, she held a variety of clinical research management roles at leading medical device innovators, such as Alcon, Avinger and SentreHEART. Ms. Du earned a Bachelor of Science, Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Washington in 2007. As Senior Director of Clinical Operations, Ms. Du is responsible for the strategic leadership and execution of the Company's clinical trials across all phases of development. She oversees trial planning, site and vendor management, Good Clinical Practice (GCP) compliance, data integrity, and team performance to help ensure the successful execution of studies that support additional regulatory approvals, product adoption, and commercialization. Sources 1 About QT Imaging Holdings, Inc. QT Imaging Holdings, Inc. is a public (OTCQB: QTIH) medical device company engaged in research, development, and commercialization of innovative body imaging systems using low frequency sound waves. QT Imaging Holdings, Inc. strives to improve global health outcomes. Its strategy is predicated upon the fact that medical imaging is critical to the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and that it should be safe, affordable, accessible, and centered on the patient's experience. For more information on QT Imaging Holdings, Inc., please visit the company's website at Breast Acoustic CT™ is a trademark of an affiliate of QT Imaging Holdings, Inc. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such statements contain words such as 'will,' and 'expect,' or the negative thereof or comparable terminology, and include (without limitation) statements regarding the presentation and performance of the QT Imaging Breast Acoustic CT imaging technology, plans for QT Imaging Holdings, new product development and introduction, and product sales growth and projected revenues. Forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed in any such statement. These risks include, but are not limited to: research results from the use of the QT Imaging Breast Acoustic CT Scanner, clinical studies, the ability of QT Imaging Holdings to sell and deploy the QT Imaging Breast Acoustic CT Scanner, the ability to extend product offerings into new areas or products, the ability to commercialize technology, unexpected occurrences that deter the full documentation and 'bring to market' plan for products, trends and fluctuations in the industry, changes in demand and purchasing volume of customers, unpredictability of suppliers, the ability to attract and retain qualified personnel and the ability to move product sales to production levels. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed under the heading 'Risk Factors' and in other sections of QT Imaging Holding's filings with the SEC, and in its other current and periodic reports filed or furnished from time to time with the SEC. All forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date hereof, based on information available to QT Imaging Holdings as of the date hereof, and QT Imaging Holdings assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement.
Vox
a day ago
- Vox
The spiritual life calls out to me. But is it self-indulgent?
is a senior reporter for Vox's Future Perfect and co-host of the Future Perfect podcast. She writes primarily about the future of consciousness, tracking advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience and their staggering ethical implications. Before joining Vox, Sigal was the religion editor at the Atlantic. Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a unique framework for thinking through your moral dilemmas. To submit a question, fill out this anonymous form or email Here's this week's question from a reader, condensed and edited for clarity: I graduate college soon, and like everyone around me, I'm working hard to find a job. But unlike those around me, I have a sense for how inactivity enlivens me — I get lots of joy from silence, reflection, and complete agency over my mind. I've quit most social media, and I got into meditation a while ago and never looked back. This awareness makes me tilt towards a life that optimizes for this. But I also have very altruistic leanings, which could become serious scruples if I don't do good in the world. Should I be trying to balance the pursuit of two seemingly opposed life goals — pursuing true happiness through inactivity and contemplation (as hypothesized by thinkers like Aristotle and Byung-Chul Han) and striving to do good in the world through robust goal-oriented action? The first is indifferent to which ends (if any) one's life contributes to, as long as it is blanketed in leisurely contemplation and true inactivity. The second invites and rewards behaviors that are constantly opposed to prolonged inactivity (working efficiently, constantly learning, etc). So I really don't know how to handle this. Dear Contemplative and Caring, Matthieu Ricard is known as the 'world's happiest man.' When he lay down in an MRI scanner so scientists could look at his brain, they saw that the regions associated with happiness were exploding with activity, while those associated with negative emotions were nearly silent. The scientists were stunned. How did his brain get that way? The answer: 60,000 hours of meditation. See, Ricard grew up in France, earned a PhD in genetics, and then, at age 26, abandoned a bright scientific career in favor of going to Tibet. He became a Buddhist monk and spent nearly three decades training his mind in love and compassion. The result was that one stupendously joyous brain. But what if he'd instead spent 60,000 hours bringing joy to other people? Philosopher Peter Singer once put this question to Ricard, basically asking if it was self-indulgent to spend so much time in a hermitage when there are problems in the world that urgently need fixing. Ricard gave a complex answer, and I think looking at all three components of it will be helpful to you. Have a question you want me to answer in the next Your Mileage May Vary column? Feel free to email me at or fill out this anonymous form! Newsletter subscribers will get my column before anyone else does and their questions will be prioritized for future editions. Sign up here! For one thing, Ricard pointed out that there are many different values in life. Helping other people is absolutely a wonderful value. But there are others, too: art, for instance. He noted that we don't go around scolding Yo-Yo Ma for the thousands of hours he spent perfecting the cello; instead, we appreciate the beauty of his music. Spiritual growth through contemplation or meditation is like that, Ricard suggested. It's another value intrinsically worth pursuing. Ricard also emphasized, though, that helping others is something he values very deeply. Just like you, he prizes both contemplation and altruism. But he doesn't necessarily see a conflict between them. Instead, he's convinced that contemplative training actually helps you act altruistically in the world. If you don't have a calm and steady mind, it's hard to be present at someone's bedside and comfort them while they're dying. If you haven't learned to relinquish your grip on the self, it's hard to lead a nonprofit without falling prey to a clash of egos. Still, Ricard admitted that he is not without regret about his lifestyle. His regret, he said, was 'not to have put compassion into action' for so many years. In his 50s, he decided to address this by setting up a foundation doing humanitarian work in Tibet, Nepal, and India. But the fact that he'd neglected to concretely help humanity for half a century seemed to weigh on him. What can we learn from Ricard's example? For someone like you, who values both contemplation and altruism, it's important to realize that each one can actually bolster the other. We've already seen Ricard make the point that contemplation can improve altruistic action. But another famous Buddhist talked about how action in the wider world can improve contemplation, too. That Buddhist was Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen teacher and peace activist who in the 1950s developed Engaged Buddhism, which urges followers to actively work on the social, political, and environmental issues of the day. Asked about the idea that people need to choose between engaging in social change or working on spiritual growth, the teacher said: I think that view is rather dualistic. The [meditation] practice should address suffering: the suffering within yourself and the suffering around you. They are linked to each other. When you go to the mountain and practice alone, you don't have the chance to recognize the anger, jealousy, and despair that's in you. That's why it's good that you encounter people — so you know these emotions. So that you can recognize them and try to look into their nature. If you don't know the roots of these afflictions, you cannot see the path leading to their cessation. That's why suffering is very important for our practice. I would add that contact with the world improves contemplation not only because it teaches us about suffering, but also because it gives us access to joyful insights. For example, Thich Nhat Hanh taught that one of the most important spiritual insights is 'interbeing' — the notion that all things are mutually dependent on all other things. A great way to access that would be through a moment of wonder in a complex natural ecosystem, or through the experience of pregnancy, when cells from one individual integrate into the body of another seemingly separate self! At this point, you might have a question for these Buddhists: Okay, it's all well and good for you guys to talk about spiritual growth and social engagement going hand-in-hand, but you had the luxury of doing years of spiritual growth uninterrupted first! How am I supposed to train my mind while staying constantly engaged with a modern world that's designed to fragment my attention? Part of the answer, Buddhist teachers say, is to practice both 'on and off the cushion.' When we think about meditation, we often picture ourselves sitting on a cushion with our eyes closed. But it doesn't have to look that way. It can also be a state of mind with which we do whatever else it is we're doing: volunteering, commuting to work, drinking a cup of tea, washing the dishes. Thich Nhat Hanh was fond of saying, 'Washing the dishes is like bathing a baby Buddha. The profane is the sacred. Everyday mind is Buddha's mind.' But I think it's really hard to do that in any kind of consistent way unless you've already had concerted periods of practice. And that's the reason why retreats exist. Buddhist monks commonly do this — sometimes for three years, or for three months, depending on their tradition — but you don't have to be a monk or even a Buddhist to do it. Anyone can go on a retreat. I've found that even short, weekend-long retreats, where you're supported by the silent company of other practitioners and the guidance of teachers, can provide a helpful container for intensive meditation and catalyze your growth. It's a lot like language immersion: Sure, you can learn Italian by studying a few words on Duolingo alone each night, but you'll probably learn a whole lot faster if you spend a chunk of time living in a Tuscan villa. So here's what I'd suggest to you: Pursue a career that includes actively doing good in the world — but be intentional about building in substantial blocks of time for contemplation, too. That could mean a year (or two or three) of meditative training before you go on the job market, to give you a stable base to launch off from. But it could also mean scheduling regular retreats for yourself — anywhere from three days to three months — in between your work commitments. More broadly, though, I want you to remember that the ideas about the good life that you're thinking through didn't emerge in a vacuum. They're conditioned by history. As the 20th-century thinker Hannah Arendt points out, vita contemplativa (the contemplative life) has been deemed superior to vita activa (the life of activity) by most pre-modern Western thinkers, from the Ancient Greeks to the medieval Christians. But why? Aristotle, whom you mentioned, put contemplation on a pedestal because he believed it was what free men did, whereas men who labored were coerced by the necessity to stay alive, and were thus living as if they were enslaved whether they were literally enslaved or not. In our modern world, Arendt notes, the hierarchy has been flipped upside down. Capitalist society valorizes the vita activa and downgrades the vita contemplativa. But this reversal still keeps the relationship between the two modes stable: It keeps them positioned in a hierarchical order. Arendt thinks that's silly. Rather than placing one above the other, she encourages us to consider the distinct values of both. I think she's right. Not only does contemplation need action to survive (even philosophers have to eat), but contemplation without action is impoverished. If Aristotle had had an open-minded encounter with enslaved people, maybe he would have been a better philosopher, one who challenged hierarchies rather than reinforcing them. It can be perfectly okay, and potentially very beneficial, to spend some stretch of time in pure contemplation like Aristotle — or like the Buddhist monk Ricard. But if you do it forever, chances are you'll end up with the same regret as the monk: the regret of not putting compassion into action. Bonus: What I'm reading Not only does modern life make it hard to think deeply and contemplatively — with the advent of AI, it also risks homogenizing our thoughts. The New Yorker's Kyle Chayka examines the growing body of evidence suggesting that chatbots are degrading our capacity for creative thought. This week, I learned that rich Europeans in the 18th century actually paid men to live in their gardens as…' ornamental hermits '? Apparently it was trendy to have an isolated man in a goat's hair robe wandering around in contemplative silence! Some scholars think the trend took off because philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau had just argued that people living in a 'state of nature' are morally superior to those corrupted by modern society. Twentieth-century Trappist monk Thomas Merton was a great lover of stillness. His poem ' In Silence' is mainly an ode to the contemplative life. But he ends the poem with these cryptic lines: 'How can a man be still or listen to all things burning? How can he dare to sit with them when all their silence is on fire?'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Hospitals scan more patients with AI technology
Staff at NHS hospitals in Hull said AI technology had cut MRI scan times, allowing them to see more patients. Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said the software used algorithms to help reduce background noise, helping to achieve sharper images in a shorter time. Karen Bunker, head of imaging, said: "This means we can reduce the scanning time on certain sequences, but still get the same imaging quality." The software has been installed at Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital and will also be introduced at Scunthorpe General Hospital and Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby. The Air Recon Deep Learning (ARDL) software was installed on the hospitals' existing MRI machines. Staff said the software was cutting between 10 and 15 minutes from average scan times. A routine MRI head scan used to take 30 minutes but now takes 20, the trust said, while a prostate scan now takes 30 minutes instead of 45. The trust added it can now scan 31 lumber spine patients over a 12 hour period, instead of 21 before. Ms Bunker said: "People who struggle with claustrophobia or those with learning disabilities, who previously couldn't tolerate a scan, are finding they are able to endure the shorter scan times." Staff also reported fewer children needed to have a general anaesthetic to get through a scan. Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here. AI in healthcare: what are the risks for the NHS? Hospitals will use AI to speed up patient care AI 'co-pilot' used to speed up cancer diagnosis Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
