Multi Purpose Platform for Virtual Care System

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We are on the cusp of a public healthcare revolution, fueled by major innovations in digital health technologies. One area of significant growth, called virtual care, or remote patient care, has the potential of forever transforming the healthcare industry. According to Deloitte (The Future of Virtual Health, 2020), 50% of healthcare executives predict that more than a quarter of all outpatient care, preventive care and long term care would move to virtual delivery in the next two decades. The main goal is to drastically minimize reliance on traditional healthcare institutions (hospitals, nursing homes, long-term health centres). Especially during pandemics, these facilities have been subjected to extreme strain and fast-rising costs. Another challenge is the significant increase in the number of elderly and disabled patients with chronic ailments, partly attributable to an aging society. Meeting this challenge requires a complete revamping of the existing healthcare infrastructure to make it more agile, less costly and easily accessible by the masses. Thanks to significant advances made in the fields of communication systems, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), it is now possible to design low-cost, reliable virtual care platforms that could benefit this ever-increasing segment of the population and relieve much of the strain on current healthcare system. The proposed program is aimed at contributing to these efforts through the design of multi- purpose virtual care platform that is adaptable for a variety of remote uses, can learn and produce notifications, and can be easily retrofitted to suite end-user needs. The platform design should allow for seamless interoperability among various points of care. The objectives are :1) developing a comprehensive framework for multi-modal information fusion of critical signals collected from the patient's end, 2)developing a suite of predictive analytics engines for pre-diagnosis and discovery of potential ailments, 3)building a multi-functional prototype around an open service-oriented architecture, to test the scalability, the accuracy, the privacy and the interoperability of the platform. This research will advance the development of novel virtual care technologies that will provide cost-effective solutions for an overstretched healthcare sector. Designing such a platform will be of tremendous benefit to society because it will enable the delivery of adequate care services without undue pressure on already-strained healthcare systems. The program presents an excellent opportunity to help shaping the Canadian healthcare industry and to expand on existing strengths in sectors such as AI, communications, security, and mobile computing. It has the potential of positioning Canada at the forefront of technology advances in this field while contributing to the training of highly qualified personnel who will lead future advances in this critical sector.