How Little Medical School Ottawa intersects education and health for kids

Little Medical School Ottawa. OpencityInc blog. Child using a blood pressure cuff.

Communicating adult concepts with children is a specialist skill. Little Medical School sits at that intersection of health and education.

Kids have so many questions, why being among the most common. Children have a tremendous natural curiosity. Through the pandemic, they have been exposed to more pseudo-medical jargon than ever before. Here we explore how Little Medical School Ottawa brings an activity-based approach to inspire children to learn more about their bodies and how we interact with our environment. 

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Five years hacking Opencity

Opencity Inc. | Strategy & Digital Communications, @gregiej, Opencity Limited, healthcare, wound care, social responsibility, inbound marketing, health care, Med Tech, medtech, Strategy and Digital Communications, hacking Opencity

Five years of hacking Opencity has revealed many new lessons around innovation, change management and project management. 

Life is a journey where the last five years have been packed with meeting many smart people, learning new things and self-reflection. 

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Examples of Ontario virtual codesign during social isolation

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Businesses across the world have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic to pivot the businesses and address virtual codesign. Here we consider four examples from Ontario Health West.

By their nature, startup entrepreneurs are curious, impulsive personalities who can often feel focused and motivated in a crisis. In this post, we examine three startups/scale-ups in Waterloo Region and one in London, Ontario. They are O2 Canada, KA-Imaging, Curiato and 123Genetix.

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Bringing a health tech incubator to fruition | Waterloo Medtech proceedings

Waterloo Medtech, Waterloo Region, health tech incubator, gregiej, OpencityInc,

There is now an optimism that the once fragmented players in Waterloo Region are beginning to coalesce in support of scaling health tech.

Waterloo Medtech has just launched their latest proceedings report discussed here. The new Medical Innovation Xchange in Kitchener opened in January. Communitech has announced a new Velocity micro VC-fund for the medtech sector. Google is opening an accelerator in the region.  

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The Future of Aging goes far beyond healthcare

The Future of Aging, SE Heath, older person wearing VR goggles

“Aging well is an expensive, important issue–one that goes far beyond healthcare.” The Future of Aging is artistic and balanced in its presentation with poignantly research quotes to complement the text. 

I have no desire to retire. Why can I not be part of a gig economy in my 70s? Those were my immediate reflections on reading Shirlee Sharkey’s eloquent introduction to The Futures of Aging.

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Tech for Good Declaration revisited

Tech for Good Declaration, Communitech, Rideau Hall Foundation

The Tech for Good Declaration should have been the headline of the True North conference, as it tackled the problematic question of ethics in innovation. 

The Tech of Good declaration formulated by the Canadian Tech Community at the 2018 True North conference affirms tech as a force for good in the world. A year on a special Declaration workshop revisited the original work and continued the conversation. 

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True North Hackathon tackle​s Social Isolation

Social Isolation, True North, Hacking Health, Hackathon

The concept of hacking in healthcare provides extraordinary possibilities. Diverse groups can co-create tangible health innovations that bring value to the front-line care of people.

We encourage you to participate in this first dual-city hackathon, run by Hacking Health in Waterloo and Ottawa, in conjunction with the True North conference. There a group of eclectic, bright minds will tackle how we can address Social Isolation, Aging and Technology.

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Physician-led health tech innovation

Physician-led health tech innovation, Technology & the Futures of Health Care 2019 conference, gregiej, event reviews

There are a plethora of health tech innovation conferences exposing how AI can transform healthcare. It is poignant then to see one that is physician-led while noting the valuable role of the pharmacist in how innovation can revolutionize the patient experience.

The inaugural Technology & the Future of Health Care Conference at the Hamilton Convention Centre rounded-off the Hamilton Health Innovation week. Here we examine some of the core messages from the physicians, entrepreneurs, academia and healthcare leaders.

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Putting ​humanity in healthcare – system level thinking

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It was a courageous step to see one of the LHINs stepping up to run the #Convergence19 conference on system thinking at a time when changes towards Ontario Health may cause the majority to be focussing internally. We need bold, decisive leadership to prompt system-level thinking in healthcare.

Here we explore the superb #Convergence19 half-day session run by Waterloo-Wellington Local Health Integration network at the award-winning CIGI (Centre for International Governance in Innovation).

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Cooperathon arrives in KW for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs

Cooperathon, Desjardins, hacking, opencityinc,

Cooperathon is the latest in the growing hacking trend to arrive in Kitchener-Waterloo. The recent interest in Hack the North, Hack 4 Health and Cooperathon prove the mounting interest in this agile, design thinking approach and collaborative problem-solving.

Here we explore the nuances of Cooperathon imagined and produced by Desjardins that runs September 28 until November 1.

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