Healthcare innovation enjoyed a significant leap forward with the creation of the Ottawa Health Research Institute on April 1st, 2001.
Serving as the research arm of The Ottawa Hospital and an affiliated institute of the University of Ottawa, the new OHRI became one of the top health-research institutes in Canada. It was born out of the merger of our hospital’s two research institutes, the Loeb Health Research Institute at the Civic Campus and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute at the General Campus.
Dr. Ronald Worton was OHRI’s first CEO and scientific director. “Any hospital can be good, and many are very good,” Dr. Worton wrote in a newspaper opinion piece. “But, for a major teaching hospital in the capital city of a great nation, very good is not good enough. Greatness is required.”
Only then can it attract the best physicians, scientists, and scholars, and serve as a resource to the world, as well as to its own community, he stated.
OHRI’s name was later changed to the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute but, conveniently, the acronym stayed the same.
