The Digital Technology Supercluster announced today that it is extending funding in five Feasibility Studies selected in the COVID-19 Program.
The Feasibility Studies deployed in the COVID-19 Program allow Supercluster members and collaborators to identify rising challenges created by the changing environment the COVID-19 pandemic brings.
“Our approach to investing in new, innovative digital technologies is based on sound experimentation in a controlled setting. These feasibility studies allow us to experiment while identifying the best application of the technology to ensure success” explained Bill Tam, Co-Founder of the Digital Technology Supercluster.
The five Feasibility Studies continuing on as projects are:
- COVID Cloud brings together Canadian expertise to accelerate the development of a digital technology platform to help track how SARS-CoV-2 is evolving over time and across specific geographic regions, uncover why the virus severity differs between people, as well as inform the development and impact of public health policies, diagnostics, treatments, or vaccines
- Lifesaver aims to fill COVID-19 information gaps by consolidating and harmonizing vast arrays of data;
- Raven2 extends the scope of the team’s original work by finding new, safe COVID-19 therapeutics that could be sold commercially in Canada and worldwide;
- Scaling Safe Food Delivery for Canadians is a pandemic-ready eGrocery Solution that covers everything a retailer needs to offer online grocery sales at scale and helping to ensure food security for all Canadians; and
- Screen O/S is now focused on improving screening for the education sector and film industry after a successful two-month assessment of their on-the-spot screening technology.
In some instances, teams shifted focus to better align their solution with the evolving problem. In others, project investment will be used to scale technologies that were found successful in initial market studies.
“The health and safety of Canadians continues to be our number one priority. I am delighted to see the Digital Technology Supercluster diving deeper into innovative technologies and solutions that will lead to a better understanding of the novel coronavirus and keeping Canadians safe throughout this pandemic and beyond,” says The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.