On taking power in the fall of 2015, the Canadian In this Commentary, we analyze the role of Liberal government appointed a minister of healthcare technology and innovation as drivers innovation, science and economic development to of the nation's productivity performance. [...] Jane Philpott, the federal minister of health, has However, there are reasons to believe that stated that some of the ideas in the 2015 report healthcare R&D in the past - as a result of of the Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation misaligned incentives in health systems - did (commonly referred to as the Naylor Report, after not focus enough on cost-reducing innovations. [...] Implicitly, therefore, the GDP statistics estimates of the economic value of better health - reflect only the cost of the resources that go as in particular, the value of longer life expectancy as inputs into the healthcare sector, not the value of a result of reduced mortality from serious health 3 In the absence of good direct measures of technology's contributions to health, the most common mea [...] This level of Commonwealth Fund Survey that asks patients, unnecessary care is comparable to that in the United the general public, and primary-care providers in States, the only country whose healthcare system is 11 developed countries about access to healthcare ranked lower than Canada's by the Commonwealth and the quality, efficiency, and equity of care. [...] In the Canadian setting, the issue of incentives is also complicated by the many different actors who are involved in decisions about the adoption of new technology (drugs, biologics, imaging and radiation machines, diagnostic equipment, and the like), as mentioned in note 1. 1 1 Commentary 480 and emulate them in a manner most appropriate to system.

"Measures to raise the rate of productivity growth in the Canadian economy have been a prominent element in our economic policy debate. With healthcare now accounting for well over a tenth of GDP, the efficiency with which healthcare resources are used has a significant impact on overall productivity, and issues relating to new technology and innovation in halthcare have been attracting increasing attention. In this Commentary, we discuss how the problem of measuring the healthcare sector's contribution to GDP has given the misleading impression that healthcare productivity growth has been slow in the past. New medical technology has helped raise both life expectancy and the average quality of life; if we had had methods to properly value these improvements, healthcare's productivity growth would in all likelihood have looked quite impressive. But healthcare has claimed a larger share of resources over time; with our aging population this trend is likely to continue. And while the productivity of healthcare resources is higher today than in the past, our healthcare system does not compare favourably with those in many other countries. There is evidence to suggest that a substantial share of our healthcare resources essentially are wasted, being used for tests and interventions of no or little value. If ways could be found to gradually reduce this waste, productivity growth in healthcare could be boosted substantially. In looking for reasons why Canada has experienced slow aggregate productivity growth, observers have pointed to Canada's relatively low spending on R & D, and have advocated government policies to more actively support it. We think such policies can be justified in their own right: Canada has plenty of talented researchers whose innovations could be exploited throughout the world. But we don't think more Canadian R & D would necessarily be an effective way to increase productivity in our healthcare system. Canada is a small country, and most of the productivity-enhancing innovations and new technology that could be adopted here have been developed elsewhere. What is more important than increased R & D is that providers and managers in our system have strong incentives to adopt cost-efficient technology. To encourage this, provincial governments, with support from Ottawa, should experiment with new models of provider payment that strengthen their incentive to adopt cost-effective drugs, treatment methods, and diagnostic tests. As well, governments should work on creating a system of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) that both discourages new technology that is too costly, and is nimble enough to not impede the adoption of efficient innovations."--Page [1].

Many Canadians currently face a crisis around timely access to care and this crisis cascades into the workplace, impacting absenteeism, presenteeism, and productivity. Based on Statistics Canada data, employees miss approximately 10 days of work per year due to illness or disability which translates into $16.6 billion of lost revenue in the Canadian economy. Lack of convenient and timely access also results in a build-up of untreated health conditions that could further drive up benefits plans.Technology has a big role to play in bridging the gap of convenient and timely access by providing high quality healthcare. This recorded session highlights how digital health innovations can empower your team with the right information, technology, tools you need to support the health of your employees.

In the section on the link between innovation and productivity the paper surveys the representative empirical studies of this relationship on industry and enterprise level, including the evidence on private and social returns on investment in R&D and innovation in Canada and abroad. [...] A revision of Statistics Canada productivity measurement methods in the early 2000s reduced the methodological differences that rendered problematic comparison of Canadian productivity levels and growth with that of the U. S. and other industrialized countries.2 Over the 1994-2000 period, the Gross Domestic Product per capita in Canada averaged about 83% of GDP per capita in the United States. [...] While the MFP continued to grow in the U. S. even after bursting of the dot.com bubble and the ensuing economic slowdown, it reversed its trend in Canada and ceased to grow, as can be seen in Figure 2. According to their figures the level of MFP in Canada relative to the U. S. decreased from 0.71 in 2000 to 0.66 in 2004. [...] At the beginning of the period Canada's R&D/GDP has been less than half of the U. S. level in the total economy, and less than one quarter of the U. S. level in manufacturing. [...] Economic growth and productivity The basics of economic growth process can be illustrated10 by the following simplified relationships: Output is function of the quantity of resources used in production and the productivity (efficiency) of the production process Output = resources used in production.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

"Industrial R & D (IR & D) is the private sector's investment of time and resources in the development of new ideas, technologies, and processes to promote business performance and create better products. IR & D also contributes to meeting pressing social challenges, ranging from development of new medical treatments to mitigation of environmental impacts to changing the ways in which Canadians work together. The returns on investments in IR & D can be high for the firms undertaking it, the economy at large, and, in particular, the region in which the IR & D takes place. IR & D and innovation are not synonymous. IR & D consists of any scientific research or technology development undertaken by Canadian businesses. Innovation, on the other hand, is a broader concept that can be defined as 'new or better ways of doing valued things.' IR & D is a critical driver of innovation, which, in turn, plays an important role in catalyzing productivity gains across the economy, thereby stimulating wealth creation and improving living standards for all Canadians. The historically low rate of investment in IR & D in Canada compared to other countries is one of the key factors that also accounts for the consistently wide gap in productivity growth between Canada and the United States"--Executive summary.

The big stories -- The skills of the new machines : technology races ahead -- Moore's law and the second half of the chessboard -- The digitization of just about everything -- Innovation : declining or recombining? -- Artificial and human intelligence in the second machine age -- Computing bounty -- Beyond GDP -- The spread -- The biggest winners : stars and superstars -- Implications of the bounty and the spread -- Learning to race with machines : recommendations for individuals -- Policy recommendations -- Long-term recommendations -- Technology and the future (which is very different from "technology is the future").