Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 04

September/October 2020 // Canadian Government Executive / 13 TECHNOLOGY ate access to the applications they needed, making for a seamless transition. D2L, a learning technology leader (based in Kitchener, On) has transformed the way millions of people learn online and in the classroom, and now with CO- VID-19 ,it is using its deep knowledge to help more people access learning. Scaling to meet the demand for its Brightspace platform has been seamless, across the five AWS Regions its leverages, to deliver remote instruction and to ensure continu- ity of learning globally in this critical time. Empowering Virtual Healthcare With strict social distancing measures in place, many Canadians are turning to virtual healthcare to receive medical as- sistance for non-COVID related issues. OTN, a virtual care network and provider of many different telehealth programs for patients in locations throughout the province of Ontario, has seen demand for its video service spike by 4,000 per cent since the start of the pandemic. OTN has been able to scale its capacity in the cloud to meet the rising demand. Adding Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances to automate network ca- pacity provisioning and reduce the time required to manage day-to-day IT activi- ties has made it possible to maintain 24x7 access to its users. In British Colombia, Medimap is rolling out a new service that leverages its exist- ing network of walk-in clinics to now con- nect patients across the province with an available clinic doctor over a secure video call running on AWS. This service is free for B.C. patients with valid Medical Ser- vices Plan (MSP) coverage. With secure messaging, audio, and video available through the Medimap platform, doctors can provide a variety of services including COVID-19 advice and prescription refills, without requiring patients to leave their homes for an initial consultation. Canadian healthcare startups are also rising to the challenge by developing quick and easy-to-use virtual healthcare solu- tions for hospitals and clinics, which are currently not accepting walk-in patients due to already overburdened resources. For example, Ottawa-based startup Aeton- ix – makers of aTouchAway, a mobile com- munications platform designed to help connect families, healthcare providers, and those receiving care–used their cloud- based platform to pivot its services to help in the wake of COVID-19. The company is now offering free virtual screening ser- vices for COVID-19 to a number of client hospitals and clinics–all of which were made possible because its cloud-native so- lution allowed for quick retooling and ca- pacity expansion. Aetonix staff members are now completely focused on supporting care and delivery of resources specific to COVID-19. Driving Research and Diagnostics Technology also plays a significant role in the detection and research of COVID-19, creating better diagnostic tests to aid in the treatment and containment of the dis- ease. Recognizing this, AWS launched the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative to support customers in Canada and glob- ally who are working to bring better, more accurate, diagnostics solutions to market faster and promote better collaboration across organizations that are working on similar problems. The initial investment of USD$20 million is to accelerate diagnos- tic research, innovation, and development to speed our collective understanding and detection of COVID-19 and other innova- tive diagnostic solutions to mitigate future infectious disease outbreaks. Funding will be provided through a combination of AWS in-kind credits and technical support to assist our customers’ research teams in harnessing the full potential of the cloud to tackle this challenge. One project funded by this new initiative is taking place right here in Canada. At the newly opened Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers from the CIC and Van- couver General Hospital are using AWS Cloud technology to develop an open- source Artificial Intelligence (AI) model to identify if someone has COVID-19 based on CT scans and chest X-rays. The model will be released under an open-source li- cense and accessible to AI researchers and healthcare providers worldwide to help identify the unique CT patterns of CO- VID-19 in patients, and hopefully extract new insights into this disease. With all these changes – many invented out of necessity – it’s clear that post-pan- demic, citizens, and employee expecta- tions are likely to be different. The cloud is going to continue to play a big part in shaping all of our futures. Rejean Bourgault is Country Manager – Public Sector at Amazon Web Services Canada. & Advanced Learning, Canada’s largest college, jumped into action quickly to get students online—and with access to the applications they need—during COVID-19. With the help of AWS Premier Partner Onica, a Rackspace Company, Humber is making it possible for students to access software that is typically only found on campus in computer labs available on any device from anywhere in the world. With- in a few days, Onica and Humber were able to design, build, and test a produc- tion solution on AWS. Using Amazon Ap- pStream, as many as 450 applications will be rolled out so that students may con- tinue their studies remotely, with the most critical titles taking just days to set up. One of the first post-secondary institu- tion in Canada to formally collaborate with AWS, Athabasca University (AU) had already started plans to modernize its IT infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and machine learning initiatives, as well as research-based applications using cloud technology. The work allows AU to bend and flex according to the ever-changing needs of its diverse learners–something that’s never been more important than it is today. For example, as the realities of work from home hit amid COVID-19, the univer- sity was able to quickly scale its remote workforce by issuing reconfigured laptops to staff who needed them. Using Amazon WorkSpaces, a managed, secure desktop- as-a-service (DaaS) solution, workers were able to power on the laptop with immedi-