Translational Research for Social Innovation: A Conversation with Alex Jadad

Dr. Jadad is a Colombian Canadian physician, innovator, researcher, entrepreneur and public advocate whose mission is to enable people – either as individuals or groups – to live healthy and happy lives, full of love, and with no regrets, until the last breath.

He obtained his medical degree in 1986, specializing in anesthesiology. While still a medical student, he became a leading medical expert on crack cocaine in Colombia and an internationally sought after speaker. In 1990 he joined the University of Oxford (Balliol College), where he became one of the first physicians in the world with a doctorate in health knowledge synthesis (systematic reviews and metaanalyses). In 1995, he joined McMaster University, in Canada, where he was Chief of the Health Information Research Unit; Director of the McMaster Evidence-based Practice Centre; Co-Director of the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre; Associate Medical Director of the Program in Evidence-based Care for Cancer Care Ontario and Professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics. In 2000, Alex moved to Toronto, where he led the creation of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, a setting designed as a simulator of the future, to study and optimize the use of ICTs before their widespread introduction into the health system and society at large. From 2000 to 2010, he was the inaugural holder of the Rose Family Chair in Supportive Care, and from 2002 to 2015, he held the Canada Research Chair in eHealth Innovation. In 2015, he became the Acting Director of the Institute for Global Health Equity and Innovation at the University of Toronto, becoming its Director, and Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in January of 2016.

Jadad’s research and innovation work seeks to create and spread health across traditional boundaries, and to trigger a pandemic of health, while eliminating unnecessary suffering. His initiatives aim at improving the capacity of humans to imagine, create and promote new and better approaches to living, healing, working and learning as part of a sustainable planet. He has been called a “human internet”, as his research and innovation work seeks to identify and connect the best minds, the best knowledge and the best tools across traditional boundaries. His projects follow a radical ‘glocal’ innovation approach designed to enable people and organizations to achieve maximum levels of health, happiness and tranquility through the judicious use of state-of-the-art approaches to scenario planning, design thinking, salutogenesis and crisis management. Dr. Jadad is the Director of the Institute of Global Health Equity & Innovation, and Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. He was the holder of the Canada Research Chair in eHealth Innovation at the University Health Network for two consecutive terms ending in 2015. He is also the Founder of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at the University Health Network.

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