BE PREPARED

Summit, Oct/Nov 2008 by Janzen, Katharine

Being prepared to respond to an emergency poses challenges for procurement professionals. A unique college network is now working with industry to develop innovative products with your need in mind.

A NEW, ONTARIO-WIDE NETWORK of colleges is working with industry to help make the lives of Canadians better. One area of focus is health and safety - from creating real-life simulation environments that are making emergency management professionals better prepared to respond to disasters, to developing assistive devices for the elderly, to a cost-effective alternative to a high-end virtual reality tool that helps people overcome phobias, researchers at Ontario colleges are making significant breakthroughs which have key real-life applications.

The network, called Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation (CONII), is a one-of-a-kind industry innovation network that links 10 of the province s top colleges located along the technology corridor between Ottawa and Windsor: Algonquin, Centennial, Conestoga, Fanshawe, George Brown, Humber, Niagara, St. Clair, Seneca and Sheridan. With a focus on applied versus pure research, the network is making it easier for industry partners to access the research expertise they need, solve technical problems faster and move products and services to market more quickly in order to remain competitive in today's global marketplace.

CONII is funded by a grant through the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation's Ontario Research Commercialization Program (ORCP), which includes $603,900 for proof of principle research projects, and also taps into other government programs, such as the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE).

It was launched to develop research projects with organizations that make effective use of faculty expertise, provide students with real-world learning opportunities, and ultimately have a positive economic impact on the province. CONII members work to solve problems or meet goals driven by community partners, an approach referred to as "market pull."

The emergency management project, for example, is a joint initiative led by Toronto-based Centennial College and its partners. Developed to benefit businesses and emergency management professionals across Ontario, the group has created a comprehensive online course in disaster and emergency management, as well as a full-scale simulation environment to help prepare health and safety professionals for emergency response and test new technologies.

Centennial College is working with four academic partners - Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences, George Brown College, Ryerson University and the University of Toronto - as well as industry partners across the Greater Toronto area, to enhance public safety through the development of an innovative, Web-based instructional tool designed to promote inter-professional collaboration during an emergency.

It also continues to enhance its Scarborough, ON-based advanced emergency simulation centre, created following the SARS outbreak in 2003 and designed as a true-to-life place for community and industry partners to test safety-related products and processes.

Centennial's new eight-week Interprofessional Disaster and Emergency Action Studies course is available to students from health and safety disciplines, including medicine, nursing, allied health, police, para-medicine, social services and pharmacy. As a culminating activity, they participate in a mock emergency staged at Centennial's simulation centre - role-playing as a victim, shadowing a professional, or serving as an observer - to give students a better understanding of how various roles work together in an emergency. Other goals include giving health and emergency professionals a way to test procedures and plans, and providing businesses with a comprehensive test bed for emergencyrelated technologies.

Centennial director, Applied Research Centre, Trish Dryden, says "We take a seamless approach that enables inter-professional communication and collaboration through high fidelity simulation, whether paramedics, firefighters, police officers or hospital staff. Professionals across disciplines learn more about how their actions impact each other, which is critical in helping to save lives in actual disasters and emergencies."

To date, Centennial has completed seven full-scale community exercises involving more than 3,500 students, faculty and professionals. For example, the Rouge Valley Health System in eastern Toronto recently used the college's simulation centre to stage a dirty bomb explosion in order to test its processes for decontamination and evacuation of patients.

Anvil Technologies Inc. of Toronto also collaborated with the centre to test and fine tune its RECoN wireless communications solution, using live voice, video and data feeds to provide timely, meaningful information to enhance the situational awareness of participants in the simulation exercise. All five institutional partners have signed on for a second iteration of the online course, which began in September.