Higgins Day 2025

Dear Colleagues,

At this week’s Higgins Day event, we proudly celebrated the outstanding achievements of our residents and educators. Now in its 37th year, the H. Patrick Higgins Memorial Scholarship Award of Merit continues to recognize excellence in resident research. This year’s award, which includes a $2,000 prize and a commemorative plaque, was selected from 27 high-quality resident presentations. Our sincere thanks to this year’s judging panel: Drs. Dalia Rotstein, Natasha Sabur, Yin Ge, Dani Cuthbert, Nikki Goldberg, Charlie Tan, Natasha Rupani, as well as Brian and Kevin Higgins.

I am very pleased to announce that Kaylee Sohng was selected for the top award for her presentation:
“Cholesterol Medications & Severe Anaphylaxis”, supervised by Drs. Peter Vadas and Erika Lee.
Congratulations, Kaylee!

Additional awards presented at this year's event include:

• William P. Jones III Memorial Scholarship Award
  Christiane Gafrey
  “Perceptions of Care in Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Persons with Inflammatory Bowel Disease”
• Quality Improvement/Education Category
  Tina Marvasti
  “IV Iron Therapy in Heart Failure”
• Research Category
  Jeremy Rosh
  “Outcomes of Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: Does Day of Admission Matter?”
• Clinical Vignettes Category
  Nickrooz Grami
  “Pinpoint – A Case from St. Michael’s Hospital”

We also celebrated the recipients of several prestigious teaching and postgraduate awards:

• Murray Muirhead Awards
  • PGY1: Huaqi Li
  • PGY2: Divya Santhanam
  • PGY3: Mitali Chaudhary
• Connon Award: Daniel Huang
• Gerald Wong Award for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence: Omar Saeed
• Dr. Robert Sargeant Postgraduate Education Award:
  Alex Muccilli, Nikki Goldberg, Linda Wang, Mario Ostrowski, Dhruv Nayyar, and Ann Young

This year also marked the inaugural presentation of the Divisional Subspecialty Resident Awards. Congratulations to the following recipients:

• Cardiology – Dr. Robert Chisholm Award: Julianah Oguntala, Mehroz Ehsan
• Critical Care – SMH Critical Care Resident Excellence Award: Kathleen Simms
• Endocrinology – Dr. Amir Hanna Clinical Excellence Award: Yucheng Zhang
• Geriatrics – Dr. Marisa Zorzitto Award: Lotus Alphonsus
• Hematology – Award for Excellence in Hematology: Arjun Pandey, Matthew Fuda
• Infectious Diseases – Bill Fong Excellence in Postgraduate Infectious Disease Award: Divya Santhanam
• Medical Oncology – Award for Excellence in Medical Oncology: Ilias Ettayebi
• Nephrology – Division of Nephrology Outstanding IM Resident Award: Junghoon Ko
• Respirology – Dr. Victor Hoffstein Excellence in Respirology Award: Nawazish Naqvi
• Rheumatology – SMH Division of Rheumatology Award of Excellence: Sivakami Mylvaganam

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this year’s event. The afternoon was filled with exceptional presentations that reflected the talent, insight, and dedication of our learners. It was a true pleasure to witness the spirit of academic and clinical excellence on display.

Congratulations to all!

With best regards,

Natalie Wong, MD, FRCPC
Interim Physician-in-Chief
Department of Medicine, St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto

Department of Medicine Weekly Roundup - June 26

Please see below for the following updates:

• The Department of Medicine is delighted to welcome Dr. Tasnim Vira, Division of Cardiology to the active staff!
• New Partnership: ICES & GEMINI
• CIHI and GEMINI team up to modernize hospital data and improve patient care
• Annual compensation process for non-union and management staff
• Chief Medical Resident Update

Taz joins the Division of Cardiology as a Clinician Teacher and Assistant Professor as of July 1, 2025.  Dr. Vira completed her MD and internal medicine residency at the University of Toronto, and her cardiology residency at the University of Calgary. She then undertook an Echo and Cardiac Multi-Modality Imaging Fellowship at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre from 2013 to 2015 followed by Intra-procedural TEE Training.  She has been involved in Procedural Interventional Echocardiography since 2015.

ICES is excited to announce a new collaboration with GEMINI – Canada's largest hospital research network focused on improving inpatient care through high-quality data and analytics.   

This partnership marks a key step forward in our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, addressing critical gaps in data holdings and linked datasets. By combining the strengths of ICES and GEMINI, we are creating new opportunities to generate deeper insights into hospital-based care to drive better patient outcomes and build a more connected and data-informed healthcare system in Ontario.  

At ICES, we know that our partnerships are the key to driving innovation and positive change. We work better together!

Why GEMINI?

Founded in 2014 by Drs. Amol Verma and Fahad Razak, GEMINI collects and analyzes detailed clinical and administrative data from more than 35 hospitals across Ontario to improve hospital performance and advance our scientific understanding of internal medicine patients. The platform emphasizes outcomes, resource use, and the impact of sociodemographic and clinical factors.

How We Got Here 

In 2023, GEMINI data were first linked to ICES, enabling internal research focused on patients’ trajectories of health before and after hospitalization. During this initial phase, data access was limited to GEMINI. 

On Oct. 18, 2024, ICES and GEMINI formalized their collaboration by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to: 

Seek and collaborate on mutually beneficial funding opportunities (e.g., Canadian Foundation for Innovation grants) to support infrastructure, personnel, and research capacity. 

Align technology investments and support the development of cloud-based infrastructure across both organizations. 

What This Means for You 

As of January 2025, linked GEMINI data sets are now available for ICES projects. 

These linked data sets include: 

• Detailed patient information from general medicine and intensive care units (ICU).
• Data on admissions, discharges, transfers, labs, radiology, pharmacy, and electronic medical records. 
• Over 240,000 patient encounters – covering 60% of Ontario’s adult medical and ICU beds. 

To ensure effective and secure use of this data, ICES will provide: 

• Clear guidelines on access and protocols.
• Training opportunities and onboarding materials.
• Tools and resources to support your research and uphold partnership agreements.

CIHI and Unity Health Toronto’s GEMINI Network have launched a three‑year partnership to modernize hospital data systems and enhance patient care.

Read the full article here: CIHI and GEMINI team up to modernize hospital data and improve patient care

Unity is moving forward with our annual compensation process for non-union and management staff, and are providing you with key details to support awareness and any related questions from your teams. We will be sharing this information later this afternoon with all staff.

Throughout the past several months, we have closely monitored compensation decisions made by peer hospitals. While some collective bargaining outcomes remain outstanding at Unity Health Toronto, we now have sufficient information to proceed in a way that is fair, transparent and aligned with our compensation principles.

We recognize that staff have been awaiting an update, and we are sharing this information now in advance of the summer holiday period.

Effective retroactive to April 1, 2025:

• All non-union and management staff will receive a 3% Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), consistent with other Toronto-area hospitals.
• Staff who are not at the top of their salary band will also be eligible for a progression increase within their salary range.

These adjustments will be reflected on the Friday, August 1 pay.

Retroactive payments will be processed separately, no later than Friday, August 29, to allow time for necessary calculations and validations.

Thank you for your continued patience as we worked through this year’s compensation planning. For any questions, please contact [email protected].

With every new academic year, we say goodbye to our Chief Medical Resident.  Please join me in extending our sincere thanks to Dr. Daniel Huang for the tremendous job he has done over the past year! His support and advocacy for the residents has been outstanding! We wish him well as he embarks on his GIM fellowship.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Maisha Chowdhury, who will become Chief Medical Resident as of July 1!  We all look forward to working with Maisha!