Winning eHealth Innovation Competition Sends Commerce Team to Belgium

A proposal to enable women to track their individual healthcare needs on their own during pregnancy was the winning entry in the 2009 Agfa HealthCare eHealth Innovation Challenge. Third-year students Kayleigh Roberts and Ben Richards came up with the idea of connecting expectant mothers to their personal electronic healthcare records, maintained on an online portal, through their mobile devices. In addition to giving the women access to their own information, this solution increases the effectiveness of delivering proactive care and monitoring the well-being of expectant mothers.

The prize included a trip to Agfa HealthCare’s global headquarters in Belgium to pitch their proposal to the global HealthCare CEO and Executive Team.

“We’re very proud to win the award, because we see eHealth as such a critical element to improving the Canadian healthcare system,” said Kayleigh on learning of their win in November. “To be offered the opportunity to contribute our ideas on how to better enable eHealth in Canada was an absolute thrill, and Ben and I are looking forward to discussing them at the Belgium meeting.”

The annual Agfa HealthCare eHealth Innovation Challenge was created to provide Ontario students with the opportunity to help improve the quality of patient care, support the continuation and growth of Canada’s Health Informatics industry, and drive the advancement of healthcare IT solutions. This year, 30 groups of university and college students from across Ontario were asked to submit proposals that answered the question, “How can IT enable the exchange of medical records and information among patients and healthcare providers in Canada?”