Augmentation of Lifeguard App

The opioid crisis peaked in Canada during 2020, and death by opioid overdoses had risen in BC, Canada more than Covid-19. This R&D project was funded by National Research Council, Industrial Research Assistance Program (Pacific) for augmenting the Lifeguard App with geo-fencing and other functionalities. Lifeguard app was the flagship SaaS intervention for supporting emergency services in the opioid crisis in BC, Canada. The Lifeguard app, which was in trials until then, was augmented and deployed in the province of BC by a 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). The Geo-fencing functionality automated distribution of pre-configured overdose alerts such that appropriate service could be rendered by emergency services within the province. Conversely, in late 2019, Lifeguard became a Microsoft partner and this enabled transition of the product into Azure which was suitable for enterprise-wide deployments (Emergency Services/health authorities).

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In addition, the project also began the design of a permissioned blockchain solution for enabling pre-defined actions by pre-identified and authorized users of the product; and a predictive-analytics dashboard to capture, analyze and visualize enterprise-wide solution data in real-time.

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NRC-IRAP funding was received throughout the augmentation project from April 2020 – March 2021.

Key features of the app included:

  • Overdose response timer
  • Geo-fencing
  • Custom themes for personalized resources
  • Push notifications for drug alerts
  • Connection to Emergency Services & Crisis Lines
  • Simplified UI

Media/Publications

1. Ictc-Ctic. (2020, July 3). Saving lives from the “Other Crisis” during the covid-19 pandemic at Lifeguard Digital Health. ↗

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2. Health, L. D. (2020, June 16). Lifeguard Digital Health Inc. launches mobile application powered by Microsoft Azure to combat the opioid crisis. ↗ 

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3. Health, L. D. (2020, September 18). Lifeguard app adds more life saving features.