MUHC in the Media - October 6, 2025

The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) honoured the memory of Dr. Balfour M. Mount following his death on September 25, 2025, at the age of 86, in the palliative care unit that bears his name at the MUHC's Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH). Founder of North America's first palliative care unit at the RVH, Dr. Mount transformed medicine by integrating psychosocial and spiritual dimensions into medical care for patients and their families. CBC News, La Presse, Montreal Gazette, Journal de Montréal

Dr. Lucie Opatrny, President and Executive Director of the MUHC, spoke about Dr. Mount's transformative impact on medicine in Quebec, Canada, and internationally, and about the human legacy of his vision and how it continues to guide care at the MUHC today. CTV News

In a major feature on diabetes in the magazine Québec Science, Dr. Steven Paraskevas, a surgeon at the MUHC and researcher at The Institute, discusses advances in the treatment of type 1 diabetes (Québec Science article 1), such as pancreas transplants, transplantation of islets of Langerhans (small clusters of cells that produce insulin in the pancreas), and transplantation of stem cells modified in the laboratory to produce insulin, performed at the MUHC as part of an international clinical trial. Dr. Paraskevas performed the first islet cell transplant in Quebec in 2015, and thanks to the expertise he has developed, the MUHC was designated in 2022 as the provincial centre for islet cell transplants.

As part of the same feature on Québec Science, Dr. Kaberi Dasgupta, specialist in general internal medicine at the MUHC and researcher at The Institute, discusses the progress made in prevention and remission, and the efforts needed to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes in Quebec and Canada.  (Québec Science article 2)

Children and adults alike were all smiles on Thursday when the Montreal Alouettes football players visited the Montreal Children's Hospital. Montreal Gazette

Dr. Simon Ducharme, neuropsychiatrist and associate investigator at The Institute, is the founder and director of a biobank project called Solutions for Psychiatric AI Research & Knowledge (SPARK), which goal is to gather clinical, biological and neuroimaging data of psychiatry patients who will be followed for 10 years. He discussed it with La Presse. In another article, he also commented on a new drug for Alzheimer that is not yet approved by Health Canada. La Presse

In a study published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers from The Institute demonstrate how a new artificial intelligence tool called DOLPHIN, could one day be used by doctors to catch diseases earlier and guide treatment options. The senior author of the study, Jun Ding, PhD, who is a Junior Scientist at The Institute, spoke about it on the Elias Makos Show.  CJAD

The fact that the mother who abandoned her newborn in Longueuil was not assessed by professionals after giving birth poses a risk to her health, says Dr. Marc Beltempo, a neonatologist at the Montreal Children's Hospital. Le Journal de Montréal

The COVID-19 vaccination campaign began on Monday. After analyzing the economic and health issues involved, the Quebec Immunization Committee recommended that only certain vulnerable groups receive the vaccine free of charge, explains Dr. Jesse Papenburg, pediatric infectious disease specialist and medical microbiologist at the Montreal Children's Hospital. Montreal Gazette