Western Students Lead Healthcare Solutions through President’s Challenge
A pressing national problem. A university full of bright minds.
Western has combined both in a new competition. Enter: The President’s Challenge.
With hundreds of students engaged already in its inaugural year, the focus is on using interdisciplinary knowledge and tapping into Western’s entrepreneurial expertise to tackle a major societal challenge – keeping Canadians out of the hospital.
“At Western we really want to challenge our community to think about big solutions to tough problems – and how they can make an impact – especially our students,” Western President Alan Shepard said.
“The President’s Challenge is an opportunity to bring forward unique, creative ideas while also developing the entrepreneurial and leadership skills they need for their future careers.”
Teams are built across disciplines, with members from at least two of Western’s faculties. They’ve developed, workshopped and pitched their proposals to a wide variety of experts at the university. Soon, the top five teams will go head-to-head.
“This was a cross-campus challenge where we looked at one of the really pressing needs we have here in Canada, a health-care crisis,” Eric Morse, executive director of the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship, Powered by Ivey, said of the motivation for the challenge.
“It’s easy to complain. The hard thing is to try and do something about it. That’s what I love so much about this challenge. We have so many students who have been affected and want to make changes to the system. There is a real desire to solve these problems.” – Eric Morse, executive director of the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship, Powered by Ivey
The enthusiasm has been overwhelming.
Morse originally hoped the challenge would draw 20 teams. A total of 53 entered the competition by submitting a proposal. All the teams received support from Morrissette Entrepreneurship and other experts, including faculty and entrepreneurs from the Western community, to craft their solutions.
“We just had no idea there would be so much interest. We were able to connect students from across campus with some of our best faculty thinkers, whether it was in health-care or systems thinking,” Morse said.
“It was about taking them through the process of ‘how do we attack big problems like this?’ Giving them a roadmap for not just this challenge, but for the next one and the one after that, was a big goal.”
Knowledge and expertise came from community leaders, too.
The presidents of the Children’s Hospital and Victoria Hospital, both in the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) network, were among the judges at the semi-finals, alongside business and private-sector experts.
Each of the five finalists received mentorship from two experts over the last two weeks and were invited to a tour and workshop at LHSC, the region’s largest hospital network.
The five remaining teams will compete April 5 at Design Exchange Toronto in the President’s Challenge Final and Showcase.
Hacking emergency room wait times
A three-member team studying medical sciences and software engineering went looking for options to address gaps in Canada’s current health-care system. They landed on an app tailored to patients who need urgent care, pairing live hospital wait times with driving times to the nearest emergency rooms (ERs) to show the quickest options.
“We were looking for holes we could fill in with our project. Many hospitals are operating at 110 per cent instead of 85 per cent. People are in hallways, waiting hours to get very critical services, getting clogged in these bottlenecks,” said Emma Liu, a first-year medical sciences student.
Eldar Zulic, Khalid Zabalawi and Emma Liu (L to R), the team that proposed FLOW, an app to combine live hospital wait times with driving times. (Morrissette Entrepreneurship)
“In other places in Canada, ERs are closing down. We have this problem where people are funneling into fewer hospitals and others are getting neglected.”
Their app – called FLOW – creates a list of possible ERs with the shortest cumulative driving and waiting times. The team wants to drive home a key point: Would you rather spend six hours waiting at your local ER, or drive for two hours to another hospital with a one-hour wait?
It’s about putting “power into the consumer’s hands,” Liu said. “As a patient, you have the ability to make a decision that could affect your health outcomes.”
All the team members have first-hand knowledge of what it means to wait in hospital ERs.
“This is something we would all use. We all saw this problem through our own experiences going to the ER. That’s what sparked the idea,” said Khalid Zabalawi, a third-year software engineering student and team leader.
Feasibility is one of the app’s main selling features, according to the team.
Live drive-time estimates are easy to find online and many hospitals already publish wait times. FLOW hopes to work with hospitals who don’t already track that information to implement new technology to enable it.
The FLOW team plans to work throughout the summer to bring the app to market.
Both Zabalawi and Eldar Zulic, a third-year software engineering student and the team’s third member, have experience developing apps and scraping data from the web.
“We’re here to actually try to solve the issue. There’s potential to expand to walk-in clinics and walk-in wait times, too. We’re looking at developing it, testing it with a small group and then rolling it out, hopefully,” Zabalawi said.
Taking MRIs on the road
What if a change in access could cut MRI wait times in half?
One team heading to the finals of the President’s Challenge is proposing mobile diagnostic imaging to improve access and availability of MRI services in Canada.
Team leader Riddhi Gadre, a third-year PhD candidate in chemical and biochemical engineering, said one case study the team reviewed in the United Kingdom showed wait times were cut from 13 to six weeks using a mobile model at one hospital.
“We want to enhance the reach of our health-care system into every corner, with effective time management for appointments allowing for quicker diagnosis and better patient outcomes,” she said.
Riddhi Gadre, Jaimy Hannah and Maxine Montpetit (L to R), one of the final five teams in the inaugural President’s Challenge. (Morrissette Entrepreneurship)
The idea is to start with mobile imaging in major urban centres, home to large hospitals, and then work toward more rural locations.
Gadre said the project has always been in the back of her mind, but when she heard about the President’s Challenge, she knew it was the right time to take the next step.
She partnered with team members Glen DSouza, a PhD candidate in chemical and biochemical engineering, Maxine Montpetit, a master’s student in neuroscience and Jaimy Hannah, a PhD candidate in psychology, to enter the competition.
“When you have people with hands-on experience, they bring more information. Jaimy and Maxine work with MRI in their studies, setting up participants in the scanner and running the scans or leading tests. They know the difficulties, what we need to consider, and what challenges we may encounter.”
Western support leads to enriching experience
Many of the students involved have made strides thanks to the workshops and mentorship provided through the President’s Challenge, a key focus for Western leaders who devised the concept.
Zulic said the skills he’s gained will be invaluable, regardless of what happens on April 5 at the finals.
“This is my first time pitching to an audience. I was really nervous, but I feel all the teams working together to put on this challenge prepared me really well. I got some great experience. The pitching skills are important, even if you don’t want to start your own venture,” he said.
For Gadre, learning to think about solutions from a business perspective, and not just a scientific one, has been crucial.
“All of us have science backgrounds, so the business aspect and all the numbers involved do not always come to mind,” she said.
Local and provincial health-care partners – including MPPs and staff from Ontario’s Ministry of Health – Western alumni and other leaders in the health and entrepreneurial fields are expected to attend the President’s Challenge Final and Showcase on April 5.