Building a Cancer Centre

The Cancer Centre at the Glen Campus is developing quickly, and with cancer affecting more and more people, building a centre dedicated to cancer care is a necessity. 

Brand new facilities will mean major improvement. Presently, cancer departments are spread out across several MUHC locations and both patients and health care professionals have to travel from site to site; but once on the Glen, this will change for the better. According to Dr. Armen Aprikian, Chief of Oncology, “we’ll all be working in the same place and integration is extremely valuable.”

Indeed, the benefits are enormous, not only for healthcare professionals who will be able to interact and share equipment and resources more easily, but for patients, who will have one consolidated cancer centre that regroups: multidisciplinary clinical teams, Radiotherapy and Medical Physics departments, Oncology Day Hospital, Urgent Care and Test Centres, Ambulatory Care and Pain Clinics, Palliative Care, the Clinical Research Unit and Tumor Registry, Patient and Visitor Resource Centre, and Oncology Health Information Resource Centre. Having everything under one roof will improve the patient experience, patient flow, and streamline scheduling. The Cancer Centre will also benefit from the latest equipment and cancer care will be improved as leading edge and extremely precise linear accelerators and imaging equipment are introduced.   

In addition, the Centre will be paperless. This means that it will be easier to collect data and measure results, “if you can measure your work, you can improve it. Being paperless will allow us to do that more easily,” explains Dr. Aprikian.

There is no doubt that building a Cancer Centre is a complex task, but it is one that is well worth it; the Cancer Centre at the Glen Campus will improve care both for those who administer it and receive it.