Research | Department of Medicine | School of Medicine

Respiratory Investigation Unit

The Respiratory Investigation Unit (RIU) at Queen's University and Kingston Health Sciences Centre (Kingston General Hospital Site), under the directorship of Dr. J. Alberto Neder, was founded by Dr. Denis O’Donnell in 1990. It is a clinical respiratory physiology research group dedicated to studying the neurophysiologic mechanisms of dyspnea (respiratory discomfort) and activity limitation in patients with a variety of cardiorespiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), interstitial lung disease, and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

Within this group, Dr. Nicolle Domnik explores the relationships between sleep, exercise and breathing in healthy persons and those with sleep disordered breathing.

Dr. Amany Elbehairy’s research primarily focuses on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), sleep disorders, and exercise physiology. Dr. Elbehairy's future research aims to examine the clinical utility of advanced pulmonary imaging techniques for evaluating respiratory symptoms and treatment responses, and how these are associated with both resting and exertional respiratory physiology.

We employ a variety of sophisticated and integrative physiologic measurements to assess the neural drive to breathe, respiratory mechanics, pulmonary gas-exchange and acid-base balance, cardiocirculatory responses to exertion, central and peripheral neuromuscular fatigue, and lung structure-function relationships. The long-term goal is the development of novel diagnostic and innovative treatment approaches to alleviate dyspnea, increase functional capacity and improve quality of life in these patients.

The RIU participates in sponsored clinical trials and is a site for the Canadian Cohort Lung Disease (CanCOLD) study.

Sleep Medicine Research

Dr. Vanessa Martelli’s research program focuses on the study of sleep disordered breathing, utilizing real world evidence and health economic evaluation. Her active research projects include the following:

Develop a method to use a disease-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire to measure health utility in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.
Utilize the Ontario Bariatric Registry and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) health administrative datasets to better understand obstructive sleep apnea in premenopausal females (an understudied population in the sleep apnea literature), as well as study the perioperative management of obstructive sleep apnea.
Develop the capacity at Queen’s University for computational methods and data storage requirements to derive emerging metrics of obstructive sleep apnea severity from routinely collected polysomnography. Furthermore, a prospective registry will allow for future studies assessing the association between these metrics and cardiovascular outcomes.

Dr. Amany Elbehairy also has interest in sleep and long-term ventilation. One of her future projects is to characterise patients with COPD who are most likely to benefit from long-term non-invasive ventilation, specifically in terms of enhancing quality of life, reducing exacerbation frequency, and hospital admissions.

Asthma Research Unit

The Asthma Research Unit (ARU) was opened as part of the KGH Asthma Program within the Division of Respirology, Department of Medicine at Queen’s University. The ARU is directed by Dr. M. Diane Lougheed, Professor of Medicine Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, and Community Health and Epidemiology and Senior Adjunct Scientist, ICES-Queen’s. The research team includes research associates, graduate students and a nurse practitioner. The team collaborates with many researchers at other centres as part of research networks and team grants.

Research areas include:

Asthma symptom perception and lung mechanics
Cough variant asthma
Asthma epidemiology (practice patterns and outcomes research)
Asthma guidelines implementation and knowledge translation (e.g. care maps, electronic care tools and indicators for electronic medical records)
Asthma management (clinical trials and asthma education)

Interstitial Lung Disease Research

Dr. Onofre Moran has developed a detailed database with clinical, demographic, radiological, bronchoscopic, pathological and pulmonary function characteristics of over 1,000 patients with Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) followed over 12 years now (2025). All the data are collected with standardized questionnaires in a systematic fashion and following current guidelines. This is being used to identify prognostic trends in patients with ILD. He is interested in environmental causes of ILD and collaborates with the RIU to explore the basis of dyspnea in patients with this disease. Research is a key component of the ILD Fellowship Program that he directs.

Quality Improvement Research

Dr. Genevieve Digby’s research is focused on Quality Improvement (QI) in healthcare, including efficient resource utilization, patient flow, guideline adherence, and QI education. She is leading QI initiatives in the Lung Diagnostic Assessment Program that demonstrate improvement in quality, timeliness and equity of access to care for patients with lung cancer in Southeastern Ontario.