Innovative Projects Realized

CARNA – School of Public Health Student Practicum

On August 19, 2020, the College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta’s (College) Provincial Council unanimously voted in favour of a move to a single mandate regulator. This decision is important for Alberta regulation. Pursuing dual mandates (protecting the public and advocating for the profession) can lead to conflicting and contradictory goals. Separating the association from the regulatory mandate will provide clarity and focus to both roles.

With this single mandate, the College is committing to regulatory excellence through operational efficiency and effectiveness by embedding Right-touch Regulation. This way of thinking and decision making will facilitate an efficient and effective regulatory system and register, contributing to public protection and promotion of health and well-being.

The project will conduct organizational wide reviews, by assessing regulatory processes using practices and principles of Right-touch Regulation. Through regulatory function review engagements, the project will help employees increase awareness, knowledge and ability in applying right-touch thinking to activities, processes and decisions.

Since this is leading work within Canadian regulation, the College has engaged Harry Cayton, the founder of Right-touch Regulation, guide, collaborate and support the right-touch organizational review team.

Market Research and pricing project supporting the global roll out of a next generation drug screening platform

eye3 is a medical device development company based in Southwestern Ontario. Our research facilities
are at McMaster University in Hamilton, with head offices in Port Credit. Eye3 is developing a next
generation point of care screening device for detecting drugs of abuse. The platform utilizes a field
friendly, ruggedized reader and cartridge system to test oral fluid, making it an ideal tool for widespread
deployment with law enforcement for roadside testing, and for workplace fit for duty screening.

Innovation des processus marketing

Le mandat consiste à accompagner l’organisation dans l’activation de leur boutique en ligne. Durant la première phase (recherche et analyse), le stagiaire commencera par analyser les pratiques actuelles de l’entreprise afin de savoir ce qui fonctionne bien et moins bien. De plus, il déterminera les objectifs et les indicateurs de performances pour les atteindre. Ensuite, il fera une étude des tendances du marché afin de cibler les périodes les plus propices à la vente. Puis, il poursuivra en créant un persona du client type. Enfin, il fera une recherche portant sur les tactiques ayant un potentiel de nous aider à atteindre ces objectifs. Lors de la seconde phase (développement de la stratégie), l’étudiant utilisera les résultats de ses analyses et recherches afin de développer une stratégie cohérente qui s’étendra sur divers canaux (site web, publicité payante, infolettres et médias sociaux). Par ailleurs, afin de rester réaliste, il établira un budget prévisionnel segmenté par tactique. La troisième phase (conception et l’intégration) réfère au moment où il commencera à mettre en place les tactiques déterminées durant la stratégie. La quatrième phase (optimisation) réfère à l’étape de gestion. C’est ici qu’il évaluera si la stratégie mise en place permet réellement l’atteinte des objectifs.

Sales & Marketing Development

Cherry Health plans to implement sales and marketing processes for paying customers in early Q2 2022. The primary goals of this project are three-fold: 1) Product design for the business intelligence platform (self-serve platform for market research surveys and advertising), 2) Sales process design and implementation for Cherry Health’s business intelligence products, 3) Go-to-market strategy development for the business intelligence products.

FascinASIAN Film Festival – Marketing Project

The role, reporting directly to Board members will play a key role in marketing the film festival. This will involve input into the creation of an innovative marketing and media strategy, research into other festivals, idea generation and general administrative support. It will be an excellent opportunity to work directly with a small team and be part of the decision-making process. As a student of marketing they will gain insight into festival marketing and event planning. This project is innovative in that it will be an event that merges two festivals into one time offering and it will be a combination of hybrid and live events – something that will provide experience into event planning and marketing of such an event. It will benefit the organization to have another perspective provided by the student.

OneCup AI Business Marketing and Strategy Internship

OneCup AI created an artificial intelligence pipeline featuring BETSY, our AI rancher. BETSY is the leader in the accurate visual identification of livestock using only computer vision. This technology is on the leading edge, which makes it unique in an otherwise very traditional industry, how we position our product in the market is imperative to gain market share. We launched an Early Adopter program in April of 2021, with intentions to begin shipping hardware to customers over the summer months. The global chip shortage delayed our launch as we utilize IoT technology to overcome some communication issues between the cameras and the cloud. Our admin team will be focussing on product marketing and encouraging new customers to try our service. Looking into all the options for marketing that we can utilize to reach our sales goals for 2022. We will also be working closely with our clients to fine-tune the user interface through customer feedback and interviews. Working with our development team, we will develop a work plan to update the user interface to reflect user input.

Kingston and area Cultural Heritage Dashboard – Data Collection and Analytics Project

Kingston’s cultural heritage sector is a vibrant mixture of museums, libraries, galleries, archives and historic sites. The city of Kingston alone boasts over 24 museums & historic sites, as well as 3 art galleries. This sector is fundamental to the regional economy and community quality of life. The Kingston & Area Association of Museums, Art Galleries and Historic Sites is a non-profit, professional network and collaborative resource hub championing the Kingston-area cultural heritage sector, serving multiple sites, DMOs and sector professionals through four areas of activity: professional development, advocacy, public engagement and collaborative partnerships. KAM collects, aggregates and interrogates various cultural heritage data sets. Understanding the sector’s structure, its gaps and deficits, its strengths and opportunities, in relation to the communities it serves, is critical to ensuring cultural heritage remains relevant and impactful in all its facets. Public transparency and accessibility to this information is critical and enhances the ability of both communities and policy-makers to shape and demand evidence-based decision-making and resource investment. This project is an answer to a question: how can we improve data collection, data interrogation and data sharing about cultural heritage and its impacts on our communities? It seeks to improve data interrogation through more effective data collection methods and improved accessibility of data through the creation of a (public) digital dashboard platform. The Kingston and Area Cultural Heritage Dashboard – Data Collection and Analytics Project will take place within the larger context of the Kingston Resiliency Dashboard Project.

Streamlining Supply Chain system

Streamline procurement processes to improve overall production operations and supply chain activities of Droplet Design ltd. This will be done by analysing opportunities to implement Enterprise Resource Planning application and utilising the LEAN manufacturing methodology. The project will allow the intern to apply Project Management and Operations Management concepts gaining hands-on experience by taking efforts to improvise the operations and supply chain of Droplet Design ltd utilizing the expertise of an academic supervisor from a Business Management background.

Development of an Automated Aid for Health Communication Professionals

With the increase in medical misinformation via social media there is an increased need for effective health communication from experts and authorities. In this project, interns will work with health communication professionals at Northern Health Authority to identify how they conduct their work, determine how an information system can be used to help them with their work, and implement a technology that can provide them with that support. Using research, the project will determine the best way to communicate complicated health information and will implement these rules into an algorithm which can be used to evaluate communications to the public. Northern Health will benefit from the project by having access to a tool they can use to more effectively communicate with the public.

Preliminary analysis of improvement avenues in rail-seaport intermodal transportation

The Port of Trois-Rivières seeks to improve the efficiency of its intermodal (seaport-rail) transportation system through collaboration with partners, consultants, and academic researchers as well to evaluate the benefits of different rail network layouts to increase the capacity and achieve efficient use of intermodal transportation systems that are compatible with the nature of the goods handled in Port of Trois-Rivières. The simulation of several strategic and constructed layouts will serve to evaluate and compare the performance of a series of layouts. However, the current work aims to prepare the information and data required to identify the basis such layouts to build and simulate the models.

Smart Textiles for Health and Well-being

McMaster University is collaborating with National Research Council Canada (NRC) under the AiP program of NRC, to develop smart textile technology that will integrate energy components into textile wearable products to provide daily and on-demand physical stimulus to the aged wearers. It aims to slow down or prevent the development of age-related health problems. The selected student will join the project and focus on creating localized compression in textile wearables to achieve the targeted physical stimulation. The technology is to integrate passive and active compression components into textile wearables to apply localized compression on body for achieving the equivalent effect of compression therapy or acupressure therapy. The localized compression will overcome the main problems of existing textile compression wearables that are hot, difficult to put on and uncomfortable. It will also introduce acupressure function into textile wearables so that wearers can receive its medical benefit conveniently and effectively.

Data Analytics and Communication Services for Career Services Professionals

Skill Squirrel has developed a web-based platform designed to help people in career transition, and challenged with accessing relevant career services. It serves to offer more purposeful matchmaking between job seekers, learners, trainers, and employers, while also reducing the workload of career services organizations (CSOs) and professionals that offer job search assistance, education recommendations and training programs. Through this Mitacs internship, Skill Squirrel wishes to enhance its Early Adopter Program (EAP), so that CSOs can achieve a better understanding of their client’s needs and achievements; the main project deliverable will be a prototype second iteration of the existing Skill Squirrel platform with new features that will focus on data analytics, this includes a data dashboard for career services professionals and user-to-user communication services. The enhancement of the existing EAP will support the small private and public career and education services providers, who rely heavily on government funding, which is often not paid out to the organization until after a job seeker they supported has been employed for one year. By allowing CSOs affordable access to tools like chat and other customer support services, it could improve communication and reporting for a mutually beneficial relationship between services providers and their clients, which would help to sustain small organizations and contribute towards keeping Canadians employed and helping more Canadians find new employment opportunities.