1996-10-21|CANARIE TAD

01 | Project Name

• Select-A-Physician Directory
  • Health Care and Quality of Life

• Point of Contact
  • Go Simon Sunatori, P.Eng., M.Eng.

  • 65, des Parulines
  • Hull (Québec)
  • CANADA J9A 1Z4

  • World-Wide Web ......... http://WWW.HyperInfo.CA/GS.Sunatori/
  • E-mail ................. GS.Sunatori@HyperInfo.CA
  • Telephone .............. +1-819-595-9210
  • Facsimile .............. +1-819-595-9229

02 | Description of the Applicants

• HyperInfo Canada Inc. <http://WWW.HyperInfo.CA/>
  • The Lead Contractor for this project is a federally incorporated for-profit corporation (Business Number 896068467) specialising since 1989 in Research and Development of Knowledge Service Applications in Cyberspace and on the Information Superhighway. The award-winning World-Wide Web site HyperInfo Knowledge Power Centre pioneers on-line knowledge publishing with pay-for-value electronic commerce on the Internet.

  • HyperInfo Canada Inc. will develop the system by integrating the SQL database with World-Wide Web on the Internet. The company presently has 1 permanent full-time employee, and its annual income is about $20 000 CAD. The work will be performed in Hull (Québec) CANADA.

• Potentium Inc. <http://WWW.Potentium.CA/>
  • The federally incorporated for-profit corporation is headquartered in Ottawa (Ontario) CANADA. The company specialises in dissemination of coaching knowledge and service through extensive on-line and print publications. Potentium: The Coaching Network™ has organized conferences, seminars and workshops in Canada, the United States and abroad, and has a mission to improve the coaching process in sport and other domains.

  • Potentium Inc. will analyse competing services, and prepare a marketing and commercialisation plan for these services. The company presently has 2 permanent employees, and its annual sales are about $60 000 CAD.

03 | Description of the Proposed Project

• Products or Applications to be Developed
  • A structured list of physicians in Canada called Select-A-Physician Directory will be developed, and be made accessible via World-Wide Web (WWW) on the Internet as a first point-of-entry to Personal Health Care for Canadian residents.

  • The system employs an intelligent system to find personal physician from input parameters, rather than utilising "search engines". The system provides relevant consumer health information attributes such as gender and language of the physician.

• Development Work to be Undertaken
  • A system integrating a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) with WWW will be designed and implemented. Specifically, the user interface will be an HTML form on the client web browser situated on a given platform. The HTTP web server will contain either a server plug-in architecture or a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) as a link to the RDBMS.

  • The main focus of the development would be a sophisticated schema for the RDBMS entries. The SQL relational database will be populated with information from reliable sources.

• Innovative Aspects of Deliverables
  • A unique technique makes the RDBMS data mutually exclusive for efficient operation, and reduces redundancy and duplication. For example, the source data in the RDBMS on the web server would be coded in language-independent format, so that the translation table can generate human-understandable data to the client web browser. A meta-language called Interlinguish may be used for this purpose.

  • The intelligent selection algorithm would incorporate some elements of fuzzy logic to assemble the personalised document from knowledge packets stored in the RDBMS.

• Degree of Technological, Financial or Market Risk
  • Technical risk is medium, and includes scalability of speed of access to the system.

  • Financial or market risk is high, given the uncertainty in physicians's income level.

  • Thus, the project could not proceed without CANARIE funding.

• Specific Area of Focus
  • The Select-A-Physician Directory project focuses on Health Care and Quality of Life. Specifically, it explores new models of finding a suitable physician through innovative Consumer Health Information system.

• Schematics and Figures

  

  

04 | Contribution to CANARIE's Objectives

• HyperInfo Knowledge Power Centre <http://WWW.HyperInfo.CA/> has effectively demonstrated on-line publishing on the WWW with Pay-Per-Access and Pay-Per-Read concept, as evidenced by the 1996 Canadian Internet Special Achievement Award for "Best Internet Publication (electronic)". However, current on-line publishing is limited to the presentation of static knowledge content, rather than customised rule-based solutions.

• Today, so-called "Search Engines" are recognised as an important method of finding web sites with particular topics. However, some of them index every web page in existence regardless of quality or focus of information, while others subjectively filter web pages through human intervention.

• The Select-A-Physician Directory project will deliver dynamic knowledge from the WWW site linked to high-quality knowledge bases. Thus, Canada's communications and information infrastructure will benefit from high signal-to-noise ratio when a small amount of high-quality knowledge is transmitted and received as opposed to a large amount of irrelevant data. The present philosophy to represent this situation is "Reduce/Reuse/Recycle information unless there is new piece of knowledge".

• The Select-A-Physician Directory project will facilitate the development of next-generation advanced knowledge services for future Health Care marketplace reforms in Canada. The development of such a networking application will contribute to the Canadian economy through innovative service concepts and unique, broad social benefits. This commercialised service can ideally be operated by small-sized enterprises.

05 | Target Market Description

• A vast amount of medical information is already available on the Internet, and more health information networks such as "Canadian Health Iway" are being announced. However, the most important aspect of personal health care, i.e., finding a suitable physician, remains a black art.

• Today, the primary methods of finding a family doctor are "word of mouth" and Yellow Pages because the physicians are not allowed to advertise their practices. Usually, several telephone calls are required because many physicians are no longer accepting new patients, one requires special expertise from a family doctor, or one prefers to specify a male or female physician.

• The recent health care reform proposal by the Government of Ontario to force its residents to use 1 (one) family doctor with a contract highlights the potential demand for a service that helps identify a suitable physician. Well-organised structured home pages for physicians would make unique contribution by providing relevant information to potential patients. There is no other identified competing services that are available.

• Given the urgency because of the government policy, the bilingual database of physicians for the Province of Ontario will be developed first. Thus, the initial target market would be the residents of Ontario. The operation will be financed by charging physicians subscription fees for directory enlisting and home page placement. Thus, the Select-A-Physician Directory service would enhance the growth and competitiveness of the Lead Contractor, which is a Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation.

• The economic model for the Select-A-Physician Directory service, once the system is fully commercialised, is outlined below.

• Income
  • (5 000 physicians) * ($10 CAD/month) * (12 months/year)
    = $600 000 CAD/year

• Expenses
  • Labour cost ......................... $200 000 CAD/year
  • Telecommunications ................... $20 000 CAD/year
  • Hardware maintenance ................. $20 000 CAD/year
  • Software maintenance ................. $20 000 CAD/year
  • Financial charges .................... $20 000 CAD/year
  • Royalty to CANARIE ................... $40 000 CAD/year
  • Taxes ................................ $80 000 CAD/year

• Income/Expense
  • Profit .............................. $200 000 CAD/year

06 | Schedule

• Key Project Milestones

• 1997-04
  • Start of the project.

• 1997-05
  • Finalise the service concept.

• 1997-06
  • Finalise the hardware and software requirements.

• 1997-08
  • Complete the coding of algorithm for RDBMS SQL interface.

• 1997-10
  • Complete the framework and template for physician database.

• 1998-02
  • Complete the integration of the system into WWW with CGI and plug-ins.

• 1998-06
  • Populate the physician database.

• 1998-08
  • Conduct beta testing of the service.

• 1998-10
  • Official launch of Select-A-Physician Directory service as a part of HyperInfo Knowledge Power Centre.

• 1998-12
  • Completion of the project.

• Deliverables

• 1998-10
  • A web site with Select-A-Physician Directory service on the Internet.

• 1998-12
  • A project report describing the overall system architecture as well as detailed components.

07 | Budget

• Cost of the project
  • Direct Labour ....................... $100 000 CAD

  • Direct Materials ..................... $10 000 CAD

  • Special Purpose Equipment ............ $20 000 CAD
    (25 % maximum)

  • Subcontracts & Consultants ........... $10 000 CAD

  • Travel .................................... $0 CAD

  • Other Costs .......................... $10 000 CAD

  • Total Costs ......................... $150 000 CAD

  • Total Eligible Costs ................ $150 000 CAD

• Proposed sources of funding
  • Working Capital ........................... $0 CAD

  • Debt ................................. $40 000 CAD

  • In-kind ................................... $0 CAD

  • Provincial R & D tax credits ......... $15 000 CAD

  • Federal R & D tax credits ............ $20 000 CAD

  • Other Government sources .................. $0 CAD

  • CANARIE Inc. ......................... $75 000 CAD

  • Total Funding ....................... $150 000 CAD

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"Sunatori, Go Simon" <GS.Sunatori@HyperInfo.CA>

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• Produced in Canada./Produit au Canada.

ISBN 978-0-929105-04-8

• 2024-12-17T20:36:19.000Z