WSIB gives $65M to St. Joe’s hospital for research hub

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St. Joseph’s Health Care London will be home to a first-of-its kind research hub for workplace injuries and illnesses, a landmark project funded by $65.75 million from Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.  

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The WSIB, St. Joseph’s and its medical research arm, Lawson Research Institute, announced the record investment Friday, the largest non-government research funding in London history. 

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“St. Joseph’s has a proven, outstanding track record in research, rehabilitation, pain management, occupational stress injury, imaging and surgery,” WSIB president Jeff Lang said Friday. 

“This is a historic investment. . . . It will work with industry, educators, health care and safety partners to turn the results of the research conducted here into everyday reality for workplaces across Ontario and around the world.” 

The WSIB mega-investment will support various research projects at St. Joseph’s during the next 10 years. The research by the new cccupational injury prevention and treatment network at St. Joseph’s is focusing on several key areas, including chronic pain, mental health and bone and soft-tissue injuries.  

The new research network builds on expertise St. Joseph’s already has, bringing together experts from its hand and upper limb clinic, operational stress injury program and Gray centre for mobility and activity.

“When Ontario’s workforce is well, Ontario thrives,” said St. Joseph’s president and chief executive Roy Butler, who started his career as a physical therapist treating injured workers.  

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“To be a part of this today, and the announcement of where we’re heading, is very gratifying individually, as well, as we work to focus on the wellness of our workforce at a system level.”

Among other things, the WSIB funding will support three new research chairs and their teams at St. Joseph’s. The network also will be getting a PET/MRI scanner used specifically for diagnosing mental health conditions and a new virtual-reality suite to help with workplace injury treatment and rehabilitation.  

“WSIB’s investment will add capacity to our existing strengths, it will recruit highly skilled personnel, it will provide cutting-edge infrastructure and technology,” said Lisa Porter, vice-president of research and scientific director at St. Joseph’s.

Treating and preventing the development of chronic pain is a critical concern for injured workers, said Siobhan Schabrun, research chair in mobility and activity. The new research network will help St. Joseph’s build on work already underway that uses brain screening to identify, at the time of injury, patients who are more likely to develop chronic pain long-term.

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The WSIB-funded research network, which is bringing together experts from many medical disciplines around a single goal, will have a profound impact on the injured workers who already come to St. Joseph’s for treatment, said Graham King, of the Roth McFarlane hand and upper limb centre at St. Joseph’s.

“We already see workers with fingertip to shoulder injuries,” he said Friday. “Our vision is to develop a rapid access clinic for injured workers to care for them and identify ones who have problematic injuries. We want to quickly identify the 10 per cent who are most likely to become disabled and not be able to go back to work, and stream them to the best care possible.”

The WSIB is a no-fault workplace compensation agency for injured workers that covers more than five million people in more than 300,000 workplaces across Ontario. Funded by employer premiums, the WSIB handles approximately 250,000 claims from sick or injured workers each year. 

The organization is moving its head offices to the former 3M building on Tartan Drive, in London, later this year.   

The mega-donation to St. Joseph’s, the largest ever research funding given by the WSIB, comes months after another multimillion-dollar investment in London’s education and research sector.  

In November, the WSIB gave $20 million to Fanshawe College to develop virtual reality training tools for first responders, the single largest research grant in the college’s history.  

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