WU offers $20,000 for solutions to healthcare crisis

LONDON, Ont. – Western University launched its first annual “President’s Challenge” this year, a competition that asks students to solve pressing healthcare problems. This year’s problem is how to reduce the pressure on stressed hospitals, which are often trying to care for too many patients at one time. Tomorrow, in Toronto, five finalist teams will present their solutions, and one will be the winner.

That winning team will earn a cash prize of $10,000. The second-place team will come away with $5,000 and the third-place team gets $2,500. Fourth and fifth place teams will receive $1,000.

The top three teams will have the opportunity to participate in the Western Accelerator, and to work with faculty and researchers at Western to engage in further research on their proposals.

“At Western, we really want to challenge our community to think about big solutions to tough problems – and how they can make an impact – especially our students,” Western president Alan Shepard (pictured) said. “The President’s Challenge is an opportunity to bring forward unique, creative ideas while also developing the entrepreneurial and leadership skills they need for their future careers.”

The school estimated the challenge would draw 20 teams, but instead, a total of 53 teams entered the competition by submitting a proposal.

All students at Western were eligible to participate and were encouraged to form teams of two to four members. All the teams received support from Morrissette Entrepreneurship and other experts, including faculty and entrepreneurs from the Western community, to craft their solutions.

Since the beginning of year, the program has whittled the contenders down to a top five, who will compete on April 5th.

The presidents of the Children’s Hospital and Victoria Hospital, both in the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) network, were among the judges at the semi-finals, alongside business and private-sector experts.

Each of the five finalists has received mentorship from two experts over the last two weeks and were invited to a tour and workshop at LHSC, the region’s largest hospital network.

The five remaining teams will compete April 5 at Design Exchange Toronto in the President’s Challenge Final and Showcase.

“This was a cross-campus challenge where we looked at one of the really pressing needs we have here in Canada, a healthcare crisis,” said Eric Morse, executive director of the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship, Powered by Ivey.

“We just had no idea there would be so much interest. We were able to connect students from across campus with some of our best faculty thinkers, whether it was in healthcare or systems thinking,” Morse said.

What did the students come up with? A three-member team studying medical sciences and software engineering has created an app tailored to patients who need urgent care, pairing live hospital wait times with driving times to the nearest emergency rooms (ERs) to show the quickest options.

“We were looking for holes we could fill in with our project. Many hospitals are operating at 110 percent instead of 85 percent. People are in hallways, waiting hours to get very critical services, getting clogged in these bottlenecks,” said Emma Liu, a first-year medical sciences student.

Their app – called FLOW – creates a list of possible ERs with the shortest cumulative driving and waiting times. The team wants to drive home a key point: Would you rather spend six hours waiting at your local ER, or drive for two hours to another hospital with a one-hour wait?

It’s about putting “power into the consumer’s hands,” Liu said. “As a patient, you have the ability to make a decision that could affect your health outcomes.”

Another team heading to the finals of the President’s Challenge is proposing mobile diagnostic imaging to improve access and availability of MRI services in Canada.

Team leader Riddhi Gadre, a third-year PhD candidate in chemical and biochemical engineering, said one case study the team reviewed in the United Kingdom showed wait times were cut from 13 to six weeks using a mobile model at one hospital.

“We want to enhance the reach of our healthcare system into every corner, with effective time management for appointments allowing for quicker diagnosis and better patient outcomes,” she said.