The name of the new University of Calgary Nelson PULSE Centre was no accident. The name immortalizes an Alberta medical professional and UCalgary Alum.
The new centre will establish a first-of-its-kind, provincewide data platform that will improve treatment and health outcomes specific to each patient, according to a UCalgary-issued news release.
The Nelson PULSE Centre will securely link anonymized diagnostic tests, such as imaging and electrocardiogram tracings, with how people access care, allowing researchers and physicians to identify patterns and insights that can detect diseases sooner and select the most effective treatments for each patient.
Susan Nelson, the centre’s namesake, who made a sizable contribution to the project, said that her donation was based on belief in the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine.
“The reason we made the $12 million donation is we really believe in what we’re creating, in terms of the pulse center, because of Dr. James White and also because of the Faculty of Medicine here at (the University of) Calgary, we know that they will maximize the intent and be able to leverage it to benefit many patients, but more importantly, the researchers and doctors also,” she said.
“That’s a big contribution, and a win for medicine.”
Dr. James White, MD, director of the Nelson PULSE Centre, said that as a practicing physician, the centre’s ability to make treatment suggestions will make an immense difference.
“Every week, I have to make decisions about how to improve patients’ lives as best as I can. When I do that, I’m considering guidelines and going through all of their medical records and bringing up their imaging and trying to make the best decision within a very short period of time,” he said.
“Envision a way that we could allow techniques such as AI, but also other types of models to be able to bring the right data forward at the right time, at the right moment, so that I don’t have to guess what the right decision is, I actually know what the right decision is for this patient in front of me, that’s what this will do.”
White said that the PULSE centre will work toward immediate results with personalized medical reports, with in-depth potential answers. The centre will only become further advanced as artificial intelligence advances.
“There’s bigger innovations that we can do with the advent of artificial intelligence and the scale of the data that we have access to across Alberta, to work with leading researchers to develop innovative techniques to screen for new diseases, to be able to identify the best possible care pathways and to find new discoveries that can lead to new medications,” he said.
