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Executive Summary: City of Airdrie and Area, Alberta

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The first round of the Smart Cities Challenge is closed. The Government of Canada announced the four winners (City of Montréal, Québec; Nunavut Communities, Nunavut; City of Guelph and County of Wellington, Ontario; and Town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia) on May 14, 2019.

Health is a hot topic in Airdrie. Research shows that focusing on preventative health has a much stronger impact in keeping Canadians healthy than access to medical care alone (Source: Canadian Medical Association). The Smart Cities Challenge and our focus on preventative health will help us to achieve our goal of making Airdrie Canada's healthiest community. And, we will be able to share our approach, technology and learnings through a comprehensive program that can be replicated to have the same impact in all other communities across Canada.

We are a community with two partners, the City of Airdrie and Airdrie & Area Health Cooperative, who are committed to supporting our community to become healthier and are taking tangible actions to make it a reality.

OUR PROPOSAL

The $10 million from the Smart Cities Challenge will utilize data and connected technologies that will support our goal of increasing healthy life expectancy by 3+ years over 5 years and ultimately change the lives of every resident in our community. Our proposal includes:

  1. Optimizing open data and connected technologies.
  2. Building the HealthSmart Community Operating System (COS) – a community connector that facilitates data to be exchanged between individuals, organizations and businesses.
  3. Developing the Smart Service Inventory – a smart navigation system allowing users to know what services are available locally, how to access, why to access, and why it is best suited to them based on their own individual profiles and will mobilize community information regarding the social deter- minants of health.
  4. Connecting the COS with several technologies that are outside of the Smart Cities Challenge through an application programming interface. Examples of other technologies include the Community Health Information Resource Platform (a partnership between the Airdrie & Area Health Cooperative and Alberta Health Services) to support the outcome measures important in achieving our Challenge Statement, activity and fitness tracking (e.g., FitBit), micro-credentialing and eMental Health.
  5. Connecting users to the HealthSmart Technology through the MyAirdrie Portal, native mobile apps and kiosks offering access to all residents around the city.

HealthSmart Airdrie will connect the work we are doing to change the culture of our community to one that focuses on health, by implementing Blue Zones. By optimizing our environment – those settings where we live, work, and play, which influence our behaviour – we can make the healthy choice the easy choice so that we naturally adopt healthy behaviours.

(Source:Becominga Blue Zones Community Handout – Blue Zones Project).

To build a technology that meets the needs of residents and gives them easy access to healthy choices, we will:

  • Focus on the social determinants of health and connecting the technology to meet the current and evolving needs of residents – Chapter 1: Vision.
  • Measure well-being through Community Health to provide indicators for individuals to assess how they are doing in relation to these determinants – Chapter 2: Performance Measurement.
  • Provide a variety of opportunities for stakeholder input into the development and implementation – Chapter 6: Engagement.
  • Implement a diverse and inclusive approach to stake- holder identification, involvement and engagement – Chapter 6: Engagement.
  • Ensure privacy and security of data is core to the project – Chapter 4: Technology and Chapter 7: Privacy and Data

The implementation of our Smart Cities Challenge program will include best practices in project manage- ment, the stakeholder engagement methodology from the International Association of Public Participation, a detailed data management, privacy and security plan, well defined governance and supporting structures, sound contractual agreements and the identification of risks and mitigation strategies in a risk register.

The Smart Cities Challenge allows us to engage community residents and build a technology over the next five years, providing Airdrie with a unique opportunity to have a real impact on people's lives. Ultimately, increasing healthy life expectancy by 3+ years over 5 years.

Airdrie is excited to be the proving ground for creating a technology that enables our residents to achieve better health outcomes. We are even more excited to share the learnings of our journey with the rest of Canada. Together we can create a country of healthy, resilient, engaged and supportive communities.

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