To see one of Canada’s busiest labour and delivery hospital networks facilitate a national app contest that benefits both Canadian delivery rooms and Canadian students, is a pretty cool thing to see.
This is exactly what’s gone on over the past few months with the William Osler Health Foundation “Kiss My App” contest. Today Osler has selected the winner of the $10,000 app-building contest for Canadian students.
Atinderpal (Atinder) Singh Multani can tell others to kiss his app after winning the contest and the cash. His new app focused on improving the patient experience at the hospital.
Osler hosted the Kiss My App awards where Multani’s app, HosNav, was unveiled before a standing-room only crowd in Brampton Civic Hospital’s Atrium. Chris Hadfield’s son Evan, the person behind his father’s “astronomical” social media campaign and Marc Saltzman, “tech expert” and host of Gear Guide were on hand to host and speak at the event, and helped to announce the winning app.
“It was an amazing learning opportunity,” said Multani. “It was about winning but more than that, if we had not have won, I would have still learned a lot.”
Slated for launch in a few months’ time, the new “HosNav” app assists diagnostic imaging prep, and Osler said it will “help to transform the Osler hospital experience by providing better, more personalized service for patients and families.”
“We have been completely blown away by the ingenuity and out-of-the box thinking demonstrated by our student teams, and the creativity in how they have presented their ideas throughout this competition,” said Osler CEO Matthew Anderson. “These students have different educational backgrounds, but they all have a single passion for improving health care.”
One of the first contests of its kind in Canada, Osler launched Kiss My App in September and challenged undergraduate students to come up with innovative ways to identify and address what they see as perceived issues in health care through the development of a mobile app. Four finalist teams were in the running for the top prize.
The prize money is donated by Osler’s Student Volunteer Youth Committee, which is a group of passionate young leaders committed to improving Osler’s hospitals by raising funds for equipment and providing student bursaries.
(Pause: I’d say this is both pretty important and amazing: student leaders investing in other students for Canadian tech.”
“We are thrilled to be involved with Kiss My App,” said Yamna Ali, President of Osler’s Student Volunteer Youth Committee. “To be able to support this contest and an idea that will help improve the patient experience at this hospital is an honour, and something our Committee can proudly stand beside.”
William Osler Health System is a hospital system that serves 1.3 million residents of Brampton, Etobicoke, and surrounding communities within the Central West Local Health Integration Network. Osler’s emergency departments are among the busiest in Ontario and its labour and delivery program is one of the largest in the province.