Our Hospital Watch Live solution was recently featured on the Financial Post series Smart Shift. Click the image to watch “Smart Health”:

Polytechnics Canada welcomes the Federal Government’s Budget with its direct recognition for the role our members play in advancing Canadian innovation through our applied research and commercialization activities.

Budget 2010 contains several strategic announcements that will advance college and polytechnic research for the benefit of Canadian companies:

• doubling the support for research collaborations between colleges and
  local firms;
• support and direction for the federal granting councils to accelerate
  the translation of knowledge into practical applications;
• encouraging federal departments and agencies to adopt and use
  innovative prototypes from small and medium-sized Canadian
  businesses;
• continued support for enhancing regional innovation and
  commercialization through funding for regional economic development
  agencies;
• direction to the Canada Foundation for Innovation to partner with
  colleges in an effort to encourage private sector innovation, and
• a review of federal funding for research and development to ensure
  commercialization success and economic development in Canada.

“Considering the fiscal context and the need to return to balanced budgets, Polytechnics Canada appreciates the federal government’s new investments in applied research, development and commercialization, particularly the sustaining funding for the very successful College and Community Innovation Program (CCIP). This will be the federal government’s flagship program for helping local Canadian companies, in all sectors, to bring technology to market with the help of our members. CCIP provides our students with hands-on applied research experience so vital for creating a highly skilled Canadian workforce,” said John Davies, President of Humber and Chair of Polytechnics Canada.

Anne Sado, President of George Brown College and Board member of Polytechnics Canada said, “This year’s budget is recognition of the direct impact Canadian colleges and polytechnics can have in advancing economic development in our country through support for our industry partners.”

“The CCIP is a very important program that enables small and medium enterprises to work closely with the college and polytechnic sector to extend, test and validate our R&D. The commitment by the federal government is a wise investment in innovation that will lead to accelerated commercialization, growth and jobs in Canada,” said Niall Wallace, CEO Infonaut Inc., a small Toronto-based IT firm that is a partner of George Brown College in a CCIP project.

“The continued support for regional innovation is very welcome. Funding for regional economic development agencies like Western Economic Diversification ensures that activities that support commercialization and drive regional economic growth can carry on. We also look forward to participating in the government’s comprehensive review of all federal support for R&D to ensure that the contribution of polytechnic and college research conducted with Canadian industry partners to advance our innovative capacity is clearly understood,” said Dr. Don Wright, President of BCIT and Vice-Chair of Polytechnics Canada.

“As a company that has benefited greatly from our research partnership with SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary, we are very excited to see clear new investment in the CCIP program. We also welcome the launch of the new Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Innovation Commercialization Program, enabling companies such as mine to market our products to federal departments and agencies. These programs will greatly enhance the economic competitiveness of Conematic in these trying times, as well as allow us to hire more polytechnic graduates who contribute to our bottom line by their job-ready skills from day one,” said Doug Smith, President Conematic Heating Systems, Inc.

“We are encouraged that the government and the Minister of Industry are sending strong signals to the Canada Foundation for Innovation to include college and polytechnic research needs for infrastructure and equipment to enhance private sector innovation,” said Nobina Robinson, Chief Executive Officer of Polytechnics Canada. “This budget makes clear that the research-ready colleges and polytechnics are now integral players in the innovation agenda of this country. Canada is moving beyond theoretical research into supporting industry-driven research that will create the jobs of tomorrow.”

Polytechnics Canada is a national alliance of Canada’s leading research-intensive, publicly-funded colleges and institutes of technology. Located in Canada’s key economic regions, the current nine member colleges and institutes of Polytechnics Canada are: British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), SAIT Polytechnic, Olds, Conestoga, Sheridan, Humber, George Brown, Seneca and Algonquin College.

Press Release

Get the latest Infonaut news in our February 2010 newsletter! Read it online here.

In addition to managing infection hot spots and improving disease containment, Infonaut’s Hospital Watch Live also functions as a safety tool for patient wandering.

The case of patient Wesley Stanko in Lethbridge, Alberta, who went missing and spent three days in a hospital mechanical room before he was found, highlights the importance of better patient monitoring, even within hospital walls.

HWL’s real-time location system (RTLS) technology can track tagged patients to within 30 cm in a hospital environment.

A 55-year-old Lethbridge, Alta., man who was missing in a hospital for three days last summer is no longer able to live independently and has moved to a nursing home.

Wesley Stanko, who has a brain injury and walks with a shuffle, was admitted to the Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge last August after suffering a fall. He wandered away from his hospital room and vanished. Three days later, he was found trapped in a hospital mechanical room.

…

Police and staff searched for Wesley Stanko from the time he was lost until he was found, said Penny Knawsny, a Chinook hospital spokesperson.

Watch how Kingston Frontenac Lennox & Addington (KFL&A) Public Health used Infection Watch Live to monitor and manage the 2nd wave of H1N1 in their community.

H1N1 pandemic ending with a whimper, not a bang

With H1N1 poised to enter history as the least deadly of four global flu pandemics, some experts are calling for an end to Canada’s mass vaccination program.

Nature is already achieving what we would hope to achieve by vaccinating, they say.

…

The drop in cases suggests Canada has hit the critical fraction of the population that needs to be vaccinated to control the pandemic, says Dr. David Fisman, a University of Toronto expert in infectious disease dynamics.

Fisman can’t understand the rational for continuing mass vaccinations. He said that for a virus as contagious as H1N1, fewer than 30 per cent of the population needed vaccination to reach a critical level of immunity.

“I’m sure that the vaccine has prevented some deaths. I’m sure that there are people who are alive right now who would not have been alive if we hadn’t vaccinated,” he says. But the pandemic was already peaking, and then subsiding before the vaccination was rolling out in force.

Full Article: here.

Only 30 per cent of Ontario residents have received H1N1 shot, says top official

Ontario’s top medical official says only 30 per cent of the province’s population has received the H1N1 shot.

The target had been to vaccinate 70 per cent of the population, and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Arlene King repeated her message Friday that people should not become complacent.

Full Article: here.

Public Health Agency says 48 cases of anaphylaxis reported after H1N1 shots

The Public Health Agency of Canada says there have been 48 cases of a severe allergic reaction reported in people who have had H1N1 shots.

The agency says that was as of the week of Nov. 20, when nearly 12.3 million doses of vaccine had been distributed across the country. The rate of anaphylactic reactions is 0.39 per 100,000 doses, which the agency says doesn’t exceed the normal rate seen for the administration of vaccines.
…
One lot of GlaxoSmithKline’s pandemic vaccine was put on hold because it was linked to a higher-than-normal number of cases of anaphylaxis.

The agency says seven of the cases of anaphylaxis were in people who received shots from that batch of vaccine.

Full Article: here.

Kenya to introduce H1N1 vaccine

Kenya will introduce vaccination against the H1N1 influenza virus commonly known as Swine Flu in January after the World Health Organisation (WHO) offered 730,000 doses of the vaccine.

In an exclusive interview with Capital News, the Director of Public Health Dr Shahnaaz Shariff said that Kenya and Togo would be the first African countries to receive the vaccine from WHO which are enough to vaccinate 10 percent of the population.

…

“The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada have actually started immunising their citizens against H1N1 and they are also targeting the high risk groups. The difference is they are paying it from their own tax payers’ money but we are getting from the WHO stockpile,” he said.

Full Article: here.

WHO Defends Flu Response Amid Exaggeration Claims

Mortality from the new H1N1 strain is “unquestionably higher” than the death toll reported by national authorities, the Geneva-based agency said in a report seen by Bloomberg News before its scheduled publication today. Deaths totaled more than 7,820 as of Nov. 22, said WHO, which estimates as many as 500,000 people die each year from seasonal strains.

Health authorities worldwide are assessing whether their response to swine flu is justified by its threat as cases of flu-like illness retreat in the U.S. and U.K. While a majority of patients recover within days and reported fatalities are a fraction of the seasonal flu toll, these figures mask the full impact of swine flu on society, WHO said.

“Compared with seasonal influenza, the H1N1 virus affects a much younger age group in all categories — those most frequently infected, hospitalized, requiring intensive care, and dying,” WHO said in the report.

…

“If you look at years of personal life lost, it’s much higher, and that’s the point we have to get across,” Osterholm said in a telephone interview today. “A death in an otherwise healthy 24-year-old, to me, is a major defeat for society.”

Full Article: here.