Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease(COPD) are the two common lung conditions in British Columbia(BC). Given the dynamic character of these two diseases and modified treatment options in recent years, this proposed study aims to assess and update the economic burden of asthma and COPD in British Columbia and determine regional differences and the impact of social-economic aspects on the burden of asthma and COPD.

A continuous observational pool of individuals with asthma and COPD will be built utilizing BC health administrative data from 1997 to 2021.

Hospitals use different warming techniques for surgery patients to prevent them from hypothermia, i.e., becoming cold during their operation. Many warming techniques are commonly available and used but studies on their holistic environmental impacts are lacking. The overall environmental impacts and economic costs of products or services can be assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA), respectively.

This aim of this project is to determine the social characteristics of neighbourhoods and elements of the urban environment that may be associated with increased rates of intentional injury (injuries resulting from violence and self-harm). Conducting comprehensive area-based assessments of intentional injury is difficult in Vancouver because of restrictions on reporting sensitive health information.

Remifentanil, an anesthetic that is administered intravenously during acoustic shock wave treatment for kidney stones, depresses a patient's ability to breathe and can lead to apnea. Respiration is normally detected via standard patient monitors which sound alarms in the event that the patient ceases to breathe for a given length of time. However, a physician or nurse often intervenes before the alarms sound and is able to prompt the patient to breathe properly. The decision to intervene includes visual observation of respiration conditions, and requires vigilant monitoring.

Medical image registration is the task of bringing two images into spatial alignment. Automatic and accurate 3D co-registration of nuclear medicine 3D image data with 3D anatomical data is crucial for improving the functional image reconstruction through anatomy-based attenuation correction. Co-registration is also important for the fusion of anatomical data with functional information. Most registration methods involve optimizing an intensity-based similarity metric that is defined by the transformation parameters.