On first blush, it doesn’t seem like a likely combination, an academic with a background in mathematics and the Ontario health care system. But increasingly, healthcare administrators, government officials, and doctors and nurses are realizing that Dr. Michael Carter’s work in industrial engineering can make the entire healthcare industry more efficient and effective without an influx of new money.

Dr. Carter is director of the Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering and professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He visited Memorial recently to give a public lecture sponsored by the Faculty of Business Administration to explain that an engineer in the hospital isn’t such a crazy idea.

Local doctors and nurses and staff from Eastern Health were in the audience, but they didn’t need convincing. As Dr. Carter put it, “There were doctors at the public lecture I gave because they already believe that industrial engineering can solve some of the problems that have been plaguing healthcare in our country.”

In fact, Eastern Health had already heard what Dr. Carter was doing in Toronto and contacted him to help with cardiac wait times in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In Ontario, Dr. Carter developed models and simulations that were the basis of a waitlist reduction strategy that saw 90 per cent of patients waiting for cardiac surgery treated within 26 weeks. 

An estimated $160 billion dollars was spent on healthcare in Canada in 2007, making it the largest industry in the country, but it is run unlike any other. 

Dr. Carter says a general rule of thumb is that the healthcare industry is about 20 years behind manufacturing and 15 years behind other service industries in terms of effectively utilizing resources.

“I’m seeing a lot of evidence that healthcare is catching up, but it’s slow. Ten per cent of the GDP and 10 per cent of the population work in healthcare, to turn that boat around is not an easy task. We’ve got hundreds of people paddling like mad, and I believe it will happen.”

When Dr. Carter started working in the healthcare sector in the early '90s it wasn’t easy. “I honestly felt that many times I was hitting my head against a wall. Nobody wanted to fund it, the hospitals didn’t want to do it, and I felt like I was the only one who cared.”

He explained. “It just really became an insane mission. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, or how I thought I was actually going to change anything, but I just kept picking away at it one piece at a time. It still keeps me awake at night, but it seems to be working.”

Dr. Jeff Parsons is the associate dean (research) for the Faculty of Business Administration. He hopes that featuring guest lecturers like Dr. Carter will help people and organizations realize the practical value of the kinds of research happening in the faculty.

As he said, “Our PhD students in management science and operations management are working in a very similar field to industrial engineering.  I’m hoping to create a level of awareness in the community that we have resources that can benefit organizations and industries in Newfoundland and Labrador.”