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As COVID-19 continues to grow across the country, a Canadian company says it has created software to better predict how the virus will spread and will help slow the second wave, but it can’t break through the red tape to show health officials how it can. to help.
“Everyone is running around reacting so much that they won’t even sit down and look seriously at the innovation we’ve built,” said Paul Minshull, CEO of Scarsin Corporation.
Scarsin, based in Markham, Ontario, north of Toronto, specializes in creating predictions for the pharmaceutical industry to predict how different treatments affect patient outcomes for cancer, diabetes and infectious disease. Its clients include multinational drug makers Bayer, Eli Lilly, Gilead, Jansen and Pfizer.
“We are one of the best companies in the world to do this type of work,” Minshull said. “The 500 global companies hiring us are all focused on the exact things Canada needs in today’s pandemic.”
So last spring, when the federal government appealed to industry to pivot on the fight against COVID-19, exploiting the “innovative power of Canadian researchers and companies, “Scarsin dropped everything to help fight the pandemic.
It allocated a third of its staff, including a PhD who had previous pandemic modeling experience – the 2009 H1N swine flu – to develop a better prediction model for COVID-19.
Prediction models, based on demographics, test numbers, positivity rates, and more, can help leaders choose measures to contain the virus. Modeling can also help predict when hospitals might be swamped with patients.
Scarsin said his software can make localized predictions for the 92 health regions across the country and consolidate them to create a national model.
A powerful platform
Four experts who reviewed the Scarsin platform for CBC News said they had not seen similar models in Canada.
The company’s COVID-19 program tracks 70 possible parameters, which can be adjusted daily. Neither Ontario nor Ottawa has released a model with a similar design or number of inputs.
Metrics include test rates, places where people have been infected, community travel, use of masks, family demographics, interventions, and more.
It can also predict how many people will suffer from mild illness or need hospitalization and separate the results by four different age groups.
It also uses location data released by Apple, Facebook is Google assess whether people are reducing social interactions in line with public health directives.
“It seems like a pretty powerful approach,” he said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, “[Scarsin has] a lot of flexibility, adaptability there. “
Scarsin said a key difference between his model and those released by governments is that the company’s system can compare different ways to curb the spread of the virus.
For example, Scarsin said his forecasting model can provide predictions for problems such as how a temporary school closure could affect social interactions and the rate of infection versus closing fitness facilities or indoor dining. .
The interventions one region may take over another to control COVID-19 will depend on the unique demographics of its population and the characteristics of its activities, the company said.
Raywat Deonandan, a University of Ottawa epidemiologist, said Scarsin’s ability to be responsive when comparing interventions could help public health leaders make better decisions to better control COVID-19.
“This could have a significant impact on the pandemic’s path, ” Deonandan said.
Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease epidemiologist and mathematical modeler at the University of Toronto, agrees, also suggesting that customizable localized data would be particularly useful.
“I’ve heard from local public health units, you know, there’s this desire to be able to have role models locally, and there’s just not the capacity at this point for that.”
He sees it as a ready-to-use solution and would like Ontario to consider giving the Scarsin system to health regions in the province.
Little government interest
So far, however, Scarsin has struggled to get health officials to look at his model, starting with Ottawa and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
A PHAC manager told Scarsin in an email that he would try to have the software checked by his department “because we have a use for it and we don’t have the ability to do it internally”, but nothing came of the exchange.
Scarsin also applied for a federal government program looking for prototypes for “help fight current and future epidemics of the new coronavirus“.
Officials with that program rejected Scarsin’s application, saying his model would be too difficult to build and test and potentially too expensive for government departments to license and operate.
It took five months for the rejection to arrive.
By then, Scarsin had already built and paid for the system himself.
Ignored by Fr.ruin
In May, an employee of the Ontario Ministry of Health told Scarsin in an email that the company’s program “is a great solution.”
He was told to submit the idea to the Ontario Together Fund, a $ 50 million program to help companies promote ideas or products to combat COVID-19.
Five months later, Scarsin still hadn’t received a decision on the question or any feedback.
The company was told the fund was “currently seeking decisions on over 6,000 proposals” that have been submitted to the government.
“The process works like normal bureaucracy,” Minshull said. “[It’s as though] I’m trying to replace a sidewalk in a subdivision. “
One region is using the software
Scarsin has also contacted more than a dozen health care Ontario regions and cities, including Toronto, Peel, and York.
Only the York region expressed interest and began using the Scarsin model in September.
This region north of Toronto includes Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and six other cities with a combined population of approximately 1.2 million.
“I haven’t found anything that has the capability that Scarsin showed us,” said Katarina Garpenfeldt, the supervisor of advanced planning at the region’s Health Emergency Operation Center.
He said the model helps predict how the pandemic could affect the community and allows health officials to “play with the variables” to see how different interventions could carry out.
“What does it mean if 25% of students opt for distance learning, and then suddenly that number increases to 40% of students opting for distance learning? How does this affect the predicted spread of the disease? or the case count? “
A proven forecast
The Ontario government has received heavy criticism ignoring the advice of public health experts and easing restrictions on businesses to help the economy as infections have been increasing for weeks.
On Friday, record case counts forced Ontario to do so Abruptly revising its new color-coded plan for COVID-19 restrictions.
However, Scarsin’s modeling found that even Ontario’s “most stringent measures” – the red control zones – will not be enough to slow the spread of the virus and prevent blockages.
One of Scarsin’s earlier predictions for Ontario proved prescient.
On October 2, in a blog post called “Wave 2 will be late, long and local in Ontario, “the company predicted that Ontario would have a minimum of 1,540 new cases per day by Memorial Day.
Ontario hit 1,575 cases on November 12.
The COVID-19 Modeling Collaborative, a joint effort of scientists and doctors from the University of Toronto, University Health Network, and Sunnybrook Hospital – which informs the panel of experts that the Ontario government uses to implement health policy – has predicted that the second wave will peak at 1,000 new cases per day from mid to late October.
A good prediction saves lives
“I think our lives depend on good predictions,” said Chris Bauch, a professor of applied mathematics at Ontario’s University of Waterloo who specializes in building complex models of infectious disease transmission.
“The whole idea of flattening the curve was based on mathematical models and this has undoubtedly saved many thousands of lives.”
Belly, who personally built two COVID-19 models, he said he was surprised at how quickly Scarsin developed his system and that it was “a truly amazing tool”.
During the pandemic, the importance of data and forecasts in the fight against infectious diseases has become increasingly evident.
Despite this, experts say there is no global forecasting strategy.
Instead, Tuite said, predictions tend to be made by small groups of experts who work together on specific problems, or who can be recruited by governments as consultants as was the case during COVID-19.
“I think people can imagine that every province or every health region, or, you know, the country has this main model that reads all the data that is generated and produces forecasts every day that are updated,” Tuite explained, “but not. there is, or has not been to date, a truly unified approach to modeling. “
Canada could lose
Scarsin said he spent $ 1.6 million on his COVID-19 model.
The company has offered to implement the system for federal government across Canada for less than $ 2 million.
“We priced that project to a level that I can tell you, we weren’t going to make any money on it,” Minshull said.
Now, Scarsin has started pursuing sales in the United States and with private companies to recoup his investment.
But he may have another option at home.
There is now a new $ 10 million federal grant program for researchers to develop forecasting tools.
The federal government set it up because – according to the government website – the pandemic made it clear “that Canada would benefit from additional skilled modeling experts.”
Scarsin can be applied.
“Some would say that maybe it’s not the smartest decision as a CEO,” Minshull said. “But I can’t help but do it.”
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