Providence Research Profiles: Dr. Jacob Hutton

Scientists at Providence Research at every stage of their careers, from seasoned clinicians to student trainees, are engaged in innovative work to improve patient care.

Dr. Jacob Hutton is a postgraduate research fellow with the BC Resuscitation Research Collaborative (BC RESURECT) and Canadians Saving Arrest Victims Everywhere (CanSAVE), as well as a paramedic with BC Emergency Health Services. He recently completed his PhD in Experimental Medicine at University of British Columbia.

Drawing from his experience providing critical care as a paramedic, his research focuses on improving outcomes for patients in emergency situations, particularly cardiac arrest.

Research to improve emergency medicine

Dr. Hutton has always been interested in first aid and emergencies. His first job in high school was as a lifeguard, and he later worked as a ski patroller. In 2020, he began working as a paramedic, which would lead him to his career in emergency research.

Of the many emergencies that paramedics attend, cardiac arrests are among the most critical. When the heart stops beating, there is a narrow window of time in which paramedics can intervene to restart the heart. A large field of research focuses on improving cardiac arrest resuscitation.

Dr. Hutton became interested in finding ways to improve resuscitation in pre-hospital contexts. After joining the B.C. Emergency Health Services research department, he met Drs. Jim Christenson and Brian Grunau, co-directors of BC RESURECT. 

Work with BC RESURECT

For more than twenty years, BC RESURECT has brought together clinicians, scientists and first responders to develop research strategies to improve survival from cardiac arrest in Canada, advancing resuscitation science through clinical trials, observational studies, surveillance, quality improvement initiatives, and knowledge translation. The unit runs the B.C. Cardiac Arrest Registry, which collects data on all out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the province. You can read more about BC RESURECT here.

In 2020 Dr. Hutton began his work within BC RESURECT as a master’s student with Dr. Grunau. He has continued on with BC RESURECT, now as a post-doctoral fellow, currently working on several observational research projects using data from the B.C. Cardiac Arrest Registry. 

“It has been a true pleasure to work with Dr. Hutton through his graduate training.  He brings the unique perspective of a practicing front-line paramedic to his research, which he combines with the application of innovative study designs and analytical methods to identify solutions for obstacles to optimize patient care,” says Dr. Grunau.

Making emergency systems more proactive, with technology

The majority of critical emergencies responded to by paramedics are very time sensitive. Dr. Hutton conducts research to discover ways to optimize emergency treatment and the performance of the emergency medical system. Finding innovative methods to recognize when someone is in distress, and enabling emergency services to reach patients faster, are ways in which research can make an impact on survival.

BC RESURECT has a growing stream of research developing cutting-edge resuscitation technologies, such as biosensors and predictive AI algorithms.

“I think especially with technology projects, moving our system from a reactive system to a more proactive, predictive and preventative system is a real lead. It’s something you feel as a paramedic, because we’re always getting there so much later,” says Dr. Hutton. “That’s what motivated me to try and be a part of shifting our system to be more proactive, using technology.”

Since 2021, Drs. Hutton and Grunau have been working on developing a wearable biosensor, similar to a smartwatch, capable of detecting cardiac arrest.

Over seventy-five per cent of cardiac arrests in BC are unwitnessed. By the time a patient is discovered by bystanders and paramedics arrive - sometimes hours or even days after the cardiac arrest event - too often, there is nothing that can be done to save them.

“If we were able to detect those cases earlier, we would be able to get there within that ten-to-fifteen-minute window – and that has a real opportunity to move the needle on survival,” says Dr. Hutton.

Over the years, the project has progressed through stages, from initially validating the sensors in a lab setting to looking at how they perform in physical simulations of cardiac arrest, where blood flow is restricted with a blood pressure cuff to emulate the heart stopping. Now, Drs. Hutton and Grunau are running a multi-site, multi-arm observational trial, working with consumer-grade wearables to collect data on real cardiac arrests. This data is used to train a high-performance algorithm, with the aim of building a system that can alert emergency services the moment a cardiac arrest happens. 

The intersection of critical illness and technology

Moving forward in his career, Dr. Hutton would like to stay in emergency research and resuscitation. He believes the field is now in a place where they have abundant digitized patient data, which provides an opportunity to shift from treating emergencies with a one-size-fits-all approach, to patient-specific, data-driven treatments.

“It’s one of those things that is at the intersection of critical illness and technology,” says Dr. Hutton. At this intersection, there is the opportunity to see research progress from idea, to validation, to real-world impact.