Jack & Sylvia Gin Emergency & Trauma Imaging Centre to open in the new Jim Pattison Acute Care Tower
Theresa McManus, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
May 10, 2026
A “jewel” in the heart of the new emergency department at Royal Columbian Hospital is expected to save thousands of lives.
The Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation recently unveiled the Jack & Sylvia Gin Emergency and Trauma Imagining Centre, known as GinETIC. The space includes CT scan, ultrasound and Xray capabilities within the new emergency department in the soon-to-open Jim Pattison Acute Care Tower.
“In an emergency, speed of diagnosis is important, and this simple but essential solution of GinETIC can be crucial in allowing greater accessibility of medical practitioners and helping to saving lives,” Jack Gin said in a news release. “This is a proud and significant partnership for our foundation.”
At the unveiling of GinETIC, Gin said he was a tech entrepreneur who was fortunate to “catch a wave” and make enough money to establish a family foundation.
“We have been sprinkling goodness for 16 years now, all under careful stewardship — thanks mostly to Sylvia,” he said. “We give responsibly and we expect integrity and results.”
The Burnaby resident recalled the numerous injuries — and visits to the emergency room — by himself and teammates during his years of playing touch football. Later, he brought his mom to Royal Columbian Hospital’s emergency department when she had a stroke.
At the April 29 unveiling, Sylvia Gin said she was thinking of her mother-in-law, who passed away two years ago.
“It was through our experiences here at Royal Columbian that we gained an understanding of how a trauma imaging centre would hugely benefit the emergency department by providing quick, compassionate care and diagnostic assessment to the people who are in such urgent need of it — and, as well, to those who waited patiently or anxiously along with them,” she said.
Instead of having to be transported to the hospital’s medical imaging department, trauma and emergency patients can get tests done at GinETIC which will be located in the heart of the department.
“So that’s great because they get the imaging right away,” said Jeff Norris, president and CEO of the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation. “It also means they are not going through and bumping scheduled cases in the imaging centre.”
Jack and Sylvia Gin prepare to officially open the new GinETIC imaging department that’s part of the new Emergency facilities at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster.
Although imaging is of immense importance to emergency medicine, Norris said it’s still “relatively uncommon” for imaging centres to be built within emergency departments.
“It’s really just a product, in a lot of ways, of their size and when they are built. So, if they are a smaller emergency room or a smaller hospital, it’s pretty hard to make a case that you need two different medical imaging areas,” he said. “But if they are a big complex hospital like this with really critical emergency cases … the business case for it makes a lot of sense.”
A jewel
Dr. Will Siu, the clinical lead for interventional radiology and the president of the RCH medical staff association, expressed staff’s gratitude to the Jack & Sylvia Gin Foundation for supporting “this incredible area” in the emergency department. He said the space includes ultrasound and Xray machines, as well as a state-of the-art CT scanner.
“This is the jewel of the imaging equipment,” he said.
According to Siu, the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation raised money to install British Columbia’s first CT scanner in Royal Columbian Hospital in the mid-1980s.
“That CT scanner is what made Royal Columbian what it is now, which is a major site for trauma, cardiac — basically anything you can think of,” he said.
But Siu said there’s no comparison to that original CT scanner — which took about 10 minutes to scan a person’s head – and the one in GinETIC.
“Now, we can scan from the top of your head to the bottom of your toe in the blink of an eye,” Siu said.
Siu said the dual energy CT scanner can generate thousands of high-resolution images of every body part — if necessary — or it can focus on specific areas, so the radiologist can figure out what is happening, determine if somebody needs immediate surgery, requires a different medical therapy or is safe to go home.
“From the very first day, probably from the very first patient that comes into this department, they will be depending on this, the GinETIC — the Gin Emergency and Trauma Imaging Centre,” he said at the event. “And we get the sickest of the sick.”
GinETIC is located in the centre of the emergency ward, where it’s accessible to all of the zones in the new ER.
“The middle of the department is the best place for it,” Siu said. “Because every critically injured patient, every really sick patient, will be depending on the imaging equipment for diagnosis and the treatment plan that subsequently follows.”
Jack Gin checks out a CT scanner in the new GinETIC imaging centre in Royal Columbian Hospital’s new emergency department.
According to Norris, the Jack & Sylvia Gin Foundation’s $1.5-million donation came early in the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation’s fundraising campaign for the RCH redevelopment project — before construction even began.
“They were one of the first to step up and made the most significant gift early on with this particular campaign, which really helped us go out and find other people that could make donations,” he told attendees at the unveiling. “So, I thank you for the leveraging effect you had in terms of supporters coming through.”
Norris said it’s no exaggeration to say GinETIC will benefit “thousands and thousands and thousands” of patients.
“It’s going to be used in moments where it is life and death. Where having an imaging centre just down the hall from emergency is going to make a huge difference in someone’s outcome,” he said. “And that’s not just their outcome, that’s the outcome of their family, that’s the outcome of everyone around them who loves them.”