keep five branches from closing.<\/a><\/p>\nOldfield’s vision for Accelerate<\/p>\n
Liberal health critic Becky Druhan told reporters that it should be the \u201cbare minimum\u201d that the government can show what an agency is supposed to do and what financial and operating accountability measures will be in place before it\u2019s launched.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is, Nova Scotians deserve health care that works before we work on health care that sells. And that\u2019s not happening right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Houston said the idea for Accelerate evolved from a discussion about how to commercialize things that are already happening and have been developed in the province. Oldfield told CBC Radio’s Information Morning Cape Breton on Wednesday that she was also involved in those talks.<\/p>\n
Oldfield said she sees health care as a two-sided coin: one side focuses on care delivery, while the other focuses on how to pay for it.<\/p>\n
That can include research, clinical trials, data, biomedical manufacturing and pharmacology, she said.<\/p>\n
“There are so many parts that come under the umbrella of life sciences and ways to partner and generate jobs and revenue that that’s the opportunity I saw,” said Oldfield.<\/p>\n
From that there are opportunities to grow the economy, she said.<\/p>\n
Both Oldfield and Houston said the YourHealthNS app is a prime opportunity for commercialization that could help other areas while generating new revenue for Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n
“We can sell that and we can take the dollars and reinject them right into our health-care system,” said Oldfield.<\/p>\n
Not a massive organization<\/p>\n
The agency will operate outside the Health Department, although the premier said it would work in conjunction with the department, the health authority and the province\u2019s health innovation hub. Oldfield said Invest Nova Scotia would also be involved at times.<\/p>\n
Houston said he does not see any redundancies with the new and existing agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all work together,” he said. “They\u2019re all important things.\u201d<\/p>\n
While there are few details about Accelerate, including its budget and how many people will work there, Houston said he expects it will mostly draw from people already working for the province and any budget increase would be \u201cincremental.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not building some massive organization there.”<\/p>\n
MORE TOP STORIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-792374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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