The Energy Research Centre on Ontario Tech’s campus hosted to The Brilliant Catalyst Challenge on Fri. Jan. 31. Students collaborated in a new exciting initiative with clinicians and mentors from Lakeridge Health to develop solutions and address some of the key challenges within health care.
The Challenge is now in its fourth year. It provides digital innovators from post-secondary institutions with a platform to discuss, explore and pitch their ideas. A panel of judges evaluates these ideas, focusing on new horizons in health care and addressing key challenges in the field.
At the opening ceremonies of the project earlier this month, Dr. Ilan Lenga, the chief information officer at Lakeridge Health, showcased the health systems quadruple aim to focus on innovation.
These focuses include improving population health outcomes, enhancing care quality, reducing costs and enhancing provider well-being by reducing burnout.
The Brilliant Catalyst Team works alongside the Partnership for Advanced Technology in Health Care (PATH) alliance held between Ontario Tech and Lakeridge Health with a focus on improving patient outcomes and access to sustainability in health care.
Dr. Lenga provided insight into how the PATH program came to fruition. “It was an idea that we started to think about how we could get the expertise combined together,” he said.
The Challenge started on Jan. 24 and is currently down to its final nine teams after starting with 19 in total. Marrisa Dunk, one of the organizers, explained more, saying: “They were given a couple of days to work on their idea.”
The program offers students a $325 honorarium for their work as well as a shot at the three key award categories: social impact and sustainability, technical innovation and market readiness. These categories each include a $2,000 grand prize to the winners of the challenge.
Brilliant Catalyst works with Experience Ventures, a grant from Employment and Social Development Canada held by the University of Calgary.
“We are part of their network of institutions. I believe they’re currently at 14 institutions, including us that are able to essentially provide experiential learning opportunities like catalyst challenge to students in post-secondary institutions,” said event organizer Miriam Akhtar, when explaining how experiential learning plays a vital role in the challenge.
What sets this event apart from other ideathons is the interdisciplinary nature of the challenge. Akhtar broke down this distinction, saying: “We welcome students of all backgrounds. Just because it’s a health challenge doesn’t mean you have to be a health science student.”