College Applies High-Tech Solutions to Health Care

Health Studies and ICT students and professors at Toronto-based Centennial College are teaming up with companies to develop new health communication technologies.

And the result is a host of innovative approaches to meeting real-world health care challenges.

Centennial's Applied Research and Innovation Centre is involved with industry on a number of projects through the College and Community Innovation (CCI) Program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

One project involves the use of gaming technologies to help people manage chronic diseases such as diabetes. The college has partnered with NexJ Systems to develop a health-game prototype that includes an avatar represntating the individual. "The person interacts with the avatar and can see the results that would occur if they lost weight, controlled their blood sugar or exercised more," says Trish Dryden, Centennial's associate vice-president of Applied Research and Corporate Planning. "This is about using gaming to effect lifestyle change for health benefits."


Centennial has also partnered with OASYS Healthcare to evaluate a software interface to control equipment in operating rooms. "Because we train nurses and have a simulated OR, we are helping OASYS to test the interface using students as well as working nurses," says Ms. Dryden. "This allows the company to evaluate how the user interacts with the technology and gives students experience with the state-of-art technology they can expect to use on the job."

A project with Interdev Technologies has produced some exciting results on a number of fronts, says Ms. Dryden - including the fact that the company has now hired a graduate, Maria Seastres, who worked on the technology as a student in the Computer Programmer Analyst program.

The technology is a dispatch interface for the computer tablets used by paramedics. Using GPS positioning, it sends the address for an emergency call to the paramedics' tablets very quickly, improving response time over current standards. "This system can cut 60 to 90 seconds off response time and, in a medical emergency, we know seconds count, so that's a significant reduction," says Terence Kuehn, Interdev's CEO.

Interdev turned to Centennial to test and improve its prototype," says Mr. Kuehn. "We wanted it to be groundbreaking and leading-edge, and the students provided us with fresh thinking and ways to enhance the software, and user interaction with the technology."

Now Ms. Seastres will work within Interdev to help bring the technology to the field. "The job opportunities for our graduates are in incredibly valuable result of these applied-research projects," says Ms. Dryden.

To read the full article: www.theglobeandmail.com

Globe and Mail – March 25, 2011