Put your hands together

By definition, the Canadian Corporate IT Hero Award recognizes a for-profit public or privately-owned business that can demonstrate the creative application of ICT in improving the lives of Canadians.

Furthermore, an entrant must readily demonstrate a social and economic benefit, address an important problem or challenge, make a noteworthy contribution that surpasses previous or current solutions, and have the potential to serve as an inspiration or model for further innovation – among other criteria.

Creating an ICT product or service which meets one of these criteria is impressive, let alone all of them. And yet, the Canadian ICT industry is full of people and companies that do.

Last month, ITAC was pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Corporate IT Hero Award: Toronto-based Dyadem and its web-based enterprise software platform, Stature. Stature helps manage the risks associated with operating hazardous processes, and the quality issues associated with designing and manufacturing products. It allows companies to manage and mitigate all of their various risks – to employees, equipment, the environment, the community, and others – on a centralized platform, creating a more efficient, visible and interconnected risk management system. This results in improved safety, health and environmental compliance and the ability to produce high quality products that protect consumer safety.

“It’s an honor to receive this award and be recognized for improving the lives of Canadians, and our friends across the globe,” said Kevin North, President and CEO of Dyadem. “Our software is used by many leaders in their respective industries, helping them more accurately capture risk trends, allowing them to implement preventive measures and make informed decisions faster. This translates into better products for consumers and safer processes that protect employees, the environment, and the surrounding community.”

With the recent BP oil spill disaster, the need for a strong risk management solution for the industry is clear. Stature aims to prevent this type of incident, in the end protecting the environment, and in many cases, saving lives.

"ITAC is very happy to recognize Dyadem, and its Stature risk assessment platform, as the winner of a 2010 IT Hero Award," said Bernard Courtois, President and CEO of ITAC. "This ICT product clearly has the potential to not only save Canadian companies time and money, but also protect and improve the safety of their employees. We commend Dyadem for a job well done."

The rest of this issue of ITAC Online profiles three Corporate IT Hero Award Finalists and their products: a solar-powered mobile device charger and two mobile apps, one of which identifies potentially harmful food allergens and the other cures vertigo. Congratulations to these impressive and innovative candidates.

Vertigo Away

Dr. Matthew Bromwich, CEO of Clearwater Clinical Ltd.

One of the world’s most common diseases is also simultaneously one of the easiest to cure and misdiagnose. According to Ottawa-based MD, Dr. Matthew Bromwich, CEO of Clearwater Clinical Ltd., the stats are dizzying. That’s why he and his team of medical and ICT professionals worked together to create the mobile application, DizzyFix, which can help cure vertigo on the spot.

Over the course of a lifetime, more than 40 percent of people will experience some kind of dizziness. The most common type of vertigo is BPPV (Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo), and while vertigo is one of three subcategories of dizziness, it is extremely common – and until very recently, it was considered extremely difficult to diagnose and treat.

That’s until Dr. John Epley discovered a maneuver that literally shifts the positioning of crystals floating in a person’s inner ear. “The Epley Maneuver” involves moving one’s head in a series of directions in order to try and move the crystals out of the inner ear chambers that cause the dizziness and into their proper locations – much like trying to control the flakes inside a snow-globe.

Clearwater Clinical Ltd.’s first product aimed at treating this disorder was a physical device consisting of a series of tubes, modeled after the human inner ear, attached to the beak of a baseball cap. The tubes were filled with liquid and small crystal-like particles, and as the patient moved their head in order to move the crystals from one tube to another, their dizziness would be fixed.

The new mobile app complements the physical device through its ability to represent a person’s inner ear when held up to their head. Exclusive to iPhones, the app uses the device’s accelerometer to read the patient’s inner ear, and instruct them on how exactly to move their head in order cure the dizziness.

Clearwater has targeted physicians as the primary users of the app, simply because the first step toward managing vertigo effectively on a large scale is to get doctors on board with how best to treat it.

“The problem was a lot of doctors either didn’t have our physical DizzyFix apparatus, or they weren’t familiar or comfortable with the Epley Maneuver,” Matthew said. “The solution came in realizing that a lot of physicians have iPhones and use them on the job, so we could develop something for the iPhone that would help treat one of the most pervasive and costly diseases on earth.”

Costly is right: a 2003 American study estimates that each episode of BPPV costs roughly $2,700 to cure, due to the typical series of misdiagnoses, and the subsequent prescriptions, unneeded appointments with specialists, lost work, travel time, and so on.

Prior to the advent of the Epley Maneuver, sufferers of Vertigo had a 15 percent spontaneous recovery rate – in other words, 15 percent of patients would simply get better naturally over the course of a few months or years. And a European study found that of the people who were properly diagnosed with BPPV, only 8 percent were treated correctly.

One successful DizzyFix treatment, meanwhile, has been proven to raise that percentage to 88 percent; while three sequential DizzyFix treatments boosts it higher to 95 percent.

“Vertigo is immensely disabling and extremely unpleasant,” Matthew said. “Some people even say they would rather feel some sort of acute pain.”

He said he is absolutely thrilled to have created a product that cures such a common and pervasive disease.

“It’s essentially miraculous,” he said. “You go from being dizzy all day to someone doing something very specific to you for a couple minutes and suddenly you’re cured.”

Matthew said Clearwater aims to elaborate on the app by creating a free student version for medical students, as well as integrating a social media component to allow vertigo patients to interact with one another through the app.

For Matthew, his work on the app is all about taking one simple yet transformative idea, and propagating it as widely as possible.

“It’s something so simple to treat, so why would you not?”

Scanning the Aisles

Michael Kwiecien, founder of Waterloo-based Visdatec Inc.

It is often said the key to a successful business idea, product or service is a gaping hole within a market that needs filling. When Michael Kwiecien, founder of Waterloo-based Visdatec Inc., realized there was essentially no technological product or service designed to help food allergy sufferers identify food allergens in the products they buy, he had discovered just that hole.

“Through my research, I found there wasn’t anything out there to help,” Michael said. “Allergy sufferers are trained to read labels and avoid – it’s been their only option up until now.”

Michael’s entire family suffers from food allergies – he and his daughter most acutely. They are lactose intolerant. Over the years, he has become accustomed to rigourously checking food labels for troublesome ingredients. But about a year and a half ago, he began to wonder if there was a more effective way to eat and shop safely.

That’s when he started working with his team of engineers at Visdatec to create the mobile iPhone application, MyFoodFacts, which can identify potential allergens in a food product simply by scanning a product’s UPC barcode.

MyFoodFacts uses the iPhone camera to scan the product’s barcode using optical recognition technology. Then, by cross-referencing the ingredient list with the MyFoodFact’s database of over 100,000 ingredients, it immediately alerts the user when an allergen is present. MyFoodFacts helps to avoid label misreads, as well as identify allergens shoppers did not previously know to look out for.

MyFoodFacts can detect over 90 percent of food allergens by targeting the 10 key allergens at the root of nearly all food allergies – milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish, sulfites, sesame seeds and shellfish – as well as the virtually endless list of these key ingredients’ relatives and subsets.

In the volatile world of mobile apps, Michael knows the challenge is to stay relevant. His solution? Create an app that transforms an element of one’s lifestyle, and encourage the user to develop a connection with the app and its user community.

“The traditional user trend with mobile apps is a high usage after buying them, and then to quit using them after 20 days or so,” he said. “This is the trend we’re bucking. MyFoodFacts is a community and relationship based type of application. We’re committed to taking this approach, and to being the users’ champion. We want to give our users a better tool to help with identifying and alerting them of food allergens.”

Michael said the key goals and purpose of MyFoodFacts are to make his community of users smarter, safer, and more efficient. And according to the response he received from his focus groups, it’s a service that those suffering from very severe reactions (especially the anaphylactic) really appreciate.

“I don’t know if you want to call it joy or what, but these people were extremely happy, ecstatic, that there was something out there for consumers that will help them recognize and identify any potential life-threatening allergens,” he said. “The impact of that, as MasterCard would say, is priceless. To assist allergy sufferers in this way, to give them that added level of comfort and well being – they couldn’t say enough about the product. It was very moving and very emotional for me.”

At the end of this month, Visdatec will release an updated version of MyFoodFacts which will provide an enhanced feature that alerts consumers of food product recalls, as well as undeclared food allergen alerts. These updates will be provided by trusted agencies and associations including the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as well as the US Food and Drug Administration and the Food Allergy and Anaphylactic Network in the US.

“I can’t believe how many agency food product recalls, undeclared allergen alerts and voluntary manufacturer recalls I miss, on any given day,” Michael said. “Having these data streams consolidated and in the palm of your hand really empowers the consumer making them smarter, more aware, and immediately informed.”