Grant: College & Community Social Innovation Fund

The project seeks to improve on how innovative ideas are transformed into useful products in rehabilitative healthcare, leading to enhanced quality of life for Canadians with chronic conditions and those recovering from disabling injury. The project addresses a key challenge in the Alberta and Canadian healthcare systems, which is that few innovations successfully get to market. Canadian innovators face major challenges in getting their innovative ideas through the crucial phases of development, procurement, adoption and on to widespread use. This project takes the view that knowledge co-creation, public-private collaboration and use of innovation 'intermediaries' can improve how innovative ideas are transformed into useful products in rehabilitative healthcare. The project will focus on the early-stage or 'upstream' innovation process, where new ideas and concepts are developed through the efforts of post-secondary students, rehabilitation clinicians, health careproviders and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) active in the healthcare sector. The project will deploy action research and participant observation methods to better understand how these different partners can work more effectively together, while identifying particular characteristics of the innovation process that influence successful outcomes. The project involves a partnership between the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), a leading Canadian polytechnic, and the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital (GRH), one of North America's largest rehabilitation hospitals. Collaborators on the project include the Glenrose Rehabilitation Research, Innovation and Technology hub (GRRIT), Clinisys, a leading healthcare SME,MEDEC, the national association representing Canada's innovative medical technology industry and Alberta Health Services (AHS).