Grant: Training Grant

The Health Care, Technology & Place (HCTP) Program is the only graduate training program that tries to understand 21st century health care by examining the way that technologies, societies & space interact. HCTP provides an integrated, collaborative & interdisciplinary approach to research training. In its first 6 years, HCTP1 generated a group of scholars who built research capacity through scholarship that links many academic disciplines & examines the complex linkages between people, places, technologies & work in modern health care. While HCTP1 focused on the setting (or places) where health care is sought, delivered or received, HCTP2 looks also at technology since increasingly, people who participate in care (patients, providers) & the technologies they use can be separated in space or time. In looking at technologies, HCTP continues to examine the people, places & work practices through which technologies are produced, understood, & have their effects. Also, HCTP2 works to encourage a broader approach to the highly practical & policy relevant domain of health technology assessment (HTA) in order to capture the wide-ranging & context-specific features of technologies in health systems & everyday life. While funded in the first wave of CIHR training programs, HCTP has evolved. This application offers evidence of innovation & progress as: HCTP2 has the same name but an enhanced emphasis on the technological mediation of care; new mentors add disciplinary depth & complementary & distinguished records to the HCTP1 mentor team; the HCTP2 curriculum structure involves innovations in design & content to ensure greater integration & core shared content; knowledge translation across disciplines is augmented by knowledge transfer & exchange (KTE) with the fields of practice & policy; & research training has been transformed & supplemented through research placement opportunities with decision maker organizations at the local, national & international levels.