04 Sep Augmentation of LifeguardConnect™
The opioid crisis peaked in Canada during 2020, and opioid overdoses in BC, Canada rose faster than COVID-19 deaths. This R&D project was funded by National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (Pacific) to augment LifeguardConnect™ with geo-fencing and other functionalities. LifeguardConnect™ was the flagship SaaS intervention for supporting emergency services in the opioid crisis in BC, Canada. The LifeguardConnect™ app, which was in trials until then, was augmented and deployed in the province of BC through the coordinated support and effort of all health authorities led by emergency services (9-1-1).
The research innovations included adding geo-fencing and transitioning into cloud-based platform (Microsoft Azure). Geo-fencing automated the distribution of pre-configured overdose alerts so that the emergency services could respond appropriately within the province. Additionally, in late 2019, Lifeguard became a Microsoft partner and this enabled the transition of the product into Azure, which was suitable for enterprise-wide deployments (emergency services/health authorities).
In addition, the project began the design of a permissioned blockchain solution for enabling pre-defined actions by pre-identified and authorized users of the product, as well as a predictive-analytics dashboard to capture, analyze, and visualize enterprise-wide solution data in real-time.
The project received NRC-IRAP funding from April 2020 to March 2021.
Key features of the app included:
- Direct Connection to Emergency Services
- Alone Timer
- Services Near Me
- Toxic Drug Alerts
- Geo-fencing
- Custom themes for personalized resources
Media/Publications
1. ICTC-CTIC. (2020, July 3). Saving lives from the “Other Crisis” during the COVID-19 pandemic at Lifeguard Digital Health. ↗
2. Health, L. D. (2020, June 16). Lifeguard Digital Health Inc. launches mobile application powered by Microsoft Azure to combat the opioid crisis. ↗
3. Health, L. D. (2020, September 18). LifeguardConnect™ adds more life-saving features.