By Carol Martin
SooToday.com
Saturday, December 06, 2008

A new health infomatics centre proposed for Sault Ste. Marie could help develop medical applications of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tracking systems.

So says Alex Miller, president of ESRI Canada, the company supplying software for the geographic information systems (GIS) systems going into the new Sault Area Hospital.

These systems could be used to track the location and movement of items as small as medicine vials throughout the new hospital.

They could also be used to track expensive defibrillator equipment, wheelchairs and other items that medical personnel often find themselves spending valuable time looking for.

Miller whole-heartedly believes that Sault Ste. Marie is on the leading edge in applying GIS to health systems.

He was at Algoma University yesterday to announce that his company wants to support growth and development in this area.

And he put hard money where his mouth was, contributing $333,333 toward the cost of creating a new health infomatics research chair and seven other people needed to support that position.

By leveraging GIS, health care agencies, governments and businesses can make informed decisions and increase efficiency throughout their organizations, Miller said.

"The Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre, in my view, is leading the world in the kind of application work that's being done in both looking at public health and with RFID tracking," Miller said. "GIS has contributed many, many benefits to many industries."

He touted the Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre as the first to create a holistic approach to community GIS, instead of focusing on singular applications such as forest or electricity resource mapping.

And as a pioneer in health infomatics.

Miller should know.

His company is one of the first in the business of design and implementation of GIS systems and he's been working with the innovation centre on a number of projects for about eight years.

The Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre operates out of and in partnership with Algoma University and will provide a home for the new health infomatics chair.

The money announced yesterday from ESRI and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund will finance the chair and associated positions for five years.

The new chair is expected to facilitate local, national and international collaboration in health infomatics and to foster local research in that area, said Tom Vair, the Innovation Centre's executive director.

The person hired will be expected to build an health infomatics research program, teach a few courses a year at the university and assist with the creation of a health infomatics centre in the Sault, Vair said.

As a result of its involvement with the new chair, Miller said that ESRI will become more visible in the GIS community and will gain access to research on how GIS can be used in health care.

Algoma University and Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre are currently hunting for a head to put on that chair.

Earlier SooToday.com coverage of this story

Say ah! Dalton & Dave monetize the Innovation Centre