The incorporation of SCAN Health was made possible due to the successful grant application submitted by Dr. Snowdon and her team at the World Health Innovation Network (WIN). WIN was an organization led by Dr. Snowdon in 2015 that created the evidence of impact and value for health innovations through research demonstration projects, cases and publications.
In 2017, the Government of Canada, Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) provided $1.6 million over four years (2017-2021) to create SCAN Health. Hosted by the University of Windsor’s Odette School of Business, SCAN Health is an International Knowledge Translation Platform (IKTP) funded to accelerate knowledge translation and address key problems, challenges and opportunities of high strategic importance for health systems in Canada and around the globe. Spanning five countries, including Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada – and with over one hundred partners from industry, healthcare, government and academia – SCAN Health will enable the exchange of information and expertise to accelerate the implementation of healthcare supply chain best practices around the world.
The foundation of the CoP is built on Dr. Anne Snowdon’s research on Canada’s healthcare supply chain focused on identifying ways to improve the processes critical to managing COVID-19 and planning for future pandemics. In 2021, the Government of Canada, Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHI) provided $1.38 million over one year to conduct this research.
In 2022, the Government of Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) awarded SCAN Health almost $2.5 million over five years (2022-2027) to develop a Community of Practice (CoP) to advance supply chain resilience, workforce sustainability and economic recovery in Canada’s post-pandemic future. With a team of 18 researchers, 40 partner organizations and citizen advocacy groups, we will build a CoP that designs, validates and scales collaborative supply chain solutions, practices and measurement tools to improve health system capacity to manage COVID-19 and respond to future pandemics.
