The mobile and electronic health development and innovation centre (MEDIC) will be open to students, faculty and industry partners as a place to develop and showcase the college’s works in the electronic health technology field.
“I credit my faculty team who came to me with an idea and said there’s a great need to prove that there is a capacity, a technical capacity, to handle the load of all these electronic health records. We think we can do that here,” Jensen said.
“With our students, our faculty and a little bit of help, we think we can do this.”
Each semester, 25 engineering technology students will work in the centre as part of co-op placements through the school.
The program itself — developing these mobile and electronic health technologies, such as electronic medical and patient health records systems — has been in place for a little while now; Mohawk received $2.3 million from Canada’s College and Community Innovation Program three years ago to work with Canada Health Infoway for development and testing of a national health records database.
But this latest funding — from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation’s Ontario Research Fund — will allow the college to build the infrastructure, a full showcase lab, to house the project and show off their work. The federal government also committed a previous $800,000 to the project back in May.
“This will be a centre where you can come in, students from other faculties can come in and we can demonstrate what we’ve been doing … companies can come in with an idea, and we can work on research proposals,” Jensen said.
“Our graduates that are coming out from working on our projects are in hugely high demand with software companies. (This will) ensure we’re getting our students sort of that living-lab, real life experience.”
“Our government recognizes the importance of investing in research … research like this plays a critical role in creating the knowledge that will lead to new products, new companies and new jobs in Ontario,” local MPP Ted McMeekin said in an email Thursday night.
The 2,000-square-foot centre will be located on the main floor of the School of Engineering Technology, and is scheduled to open in June 2013.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Molly Hayes
Quelle/Source: The Spec, 16.08.2012
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
