TRLabs' First Innovation Prize Awarded

July 24, 2007 -- TRLabs Manitoba’s research and development project to secure privacy controls for data central to establishment of a national public health surveillance system is the first recipient of TRLabs’ Innovation Prize.

"From infectious disease to bio-terrorism, the public health challenge we face today pits global reality and the rapid movement of people against our ability to detect and intervene before a crisis comes to pass," said Jeff Diamond, the technology's inventor and a Manitoba Research and Development Manager. "Our breakthrough has found a way around a primary technological obstacle in this pursuit – the ability to track and match data about people generated from many databases owned by various health authorities, while protecting against exposure of identifying information like names, phone numbers, and addresses."

TRLabs’ development of the ‘blind’ Jaro-Winkler (JW) string comparator solves two key privacy preservation challenges identified by the Public Health Agency of Canada as being important to resolve in establishing the accuracy of disease outbreak patterns: elimination of double counting of the same person, given that duplicate lab tests are often conducted on the same patient; and a way to link records in critical deployment scenarios such as patient tracking across jurisdictional boundaries. With the TRLabs innovation, a party is able to obtain a measure of the similarity of two records, without having any direct access to the records and without being able to learn anything significant about them (i.e. a 'blind' comparison). The JW technology has been around for some time and has been applied to medical records, but never in a 'blind' way.

"We're pleased with the results of bringing the innovation of the Canadian Network for Public Health Intelligence (CNPHI) team together with the creative expertise and resources available at TRLabs," said Shamir Mukhi, CNPHI Chief Engineer. "At the early stages of designing the CNPHI architecture, we recognized that the exchange of sensitive information among disparate public health databases was a key capacity needed to achieving a successful federated public health surveillance system. TRLabs' innovation bridges a technology gap with an ability to ensure secure and private distributed analysis and duplicate detection."

"TDV Global's partnership with TRLabs exemplifies how industry, government and university can generate practical solutions to complex challenges with the application of multidisciplinary teamwork," said Brad Goble, TDV Global Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner. "Jeff's invention will likely demonstrate numerous additional applications in situations in which both data mining and privacy protection are required."

The innovation marks the conclusion of a three-year research and development project conducted with TRLabs member TDV Global to develop data mining and privacy-preserving methods that aid the development of a public health surveillance system. Research results contribute to implementation of a broader initiative - the Canadian Network for Public Health Intelligence (CNPHI) - spearheaded by the Public Health Agency of Canada with its partners TDV Global, the University of Guelph, TRLabs, the Canadian Public Health Laboratory Network, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the Canadian Council of Medical Officers of Health.

The inventing scientist/team is awarded $10,000. Up to four additional Innovation Prizes are anticipated to be announced over the next year by an Awards Committee for technologies judged to have a high commercialization potential and to be of interest to industry. The creation of the Innovation Prize reflects TRLabs’ emphasis on nurturing the linkage between invention, industry relevance, and reward. The Prize complements a long-standing, discretionary Commercialization Award that rewards substantial contribution to successful commercialization of a TRLabs technology.

About TRLabs

TRLabs fast tracks innovation to market by creating innovative technologies, training students, and working with its partners to accelerate technology commercialization. Labs in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg employ 200. With 58 partner members representing a unique synergy of industry, government, and university, technology and applications research focuses on three research themes: Connected Media; eHealth; and eHome. In its 21-year existence, TRLabs has trained 865 highly skilled university graduates, created 330 technologies adopted for use by companies, and generated 95 patents issued or filed.

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