Jay and Kendal Patry are investing $1 million to establish Kingston Health Sciences Centre's (KHSC) first "Clinical Chair" role, in an area many refer to as the future of medicine - genomics.
The Jay and Kendal Patry Clinical Chair in Genomics position will be held by Dr. Prameet Sheth. His expertise in genomic sequencing and microbiology has been pivotal in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when provincial leaders and other hospitals came to rely on KHSC specialists. During the early waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, KHSC teams developed their own tests that were more accurate in detecting the COVID-19 virus.
Later in the pandemic, KHSC was selected as one of only four hospitals in Ontario to become a provincial site for "whole genomic sequencing," which allowed experts like Dr. Sheth to track the virus's evolution through its various mutations.