Timothy Chan

Engineering the best NHL team: 91�Թ� researchers create draft predictor for Las Vegas Golden Knights

ullahnor — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 15:28:03 +0000

Engineering the best NHL team: 91�Թ� researchers create draft predictor for Las Vegas Golden Knights

ullahnor Mon, 06/12/2017 - 11:28

Cutline

From left to right, Albert Loa, Michael Shin, Associate Professor Timothy Chan, Yusuf Shalaby, Ben Potter and Rafid Mahmood created a tool for the NHL’s new expansion team, the Las Vegas Golden Knights (photo by Marit Mitchell)

Liz Do

Author legacy

Liz Do

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Timothy Chan

Hockey

Subheadline

“If the Golden Knights want to use our team for some consulting, we’d be OK with that too”

While hockey fans wait anxiously for draft picks for the NHL’s new expansion team, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, Industrial Engineering Associate Professor Timothy Chan and his students may already have an idea of who made the cut.

Chan’s research group has developed and launched the NHL Expansion Draft Optimizer, a web-based modelling tool that takes a deep dive into draft data, analyzing more than 10²ºº possibilities to predict what the 2017-2018 Golden Knights roster may look like. Golden Knights' general manager George McPhee makes the draft announcement on June 21.

“We’re all big sports fans, and we were speculating about the expansion draft,” said Chan, who worked with a team of five 91�Թ� Engineering students, including undergraduates and graduate students, over the course of a month to develop the site in time for the draft. “Knowing that the announcement was coming up, we thought this website would be a great tool to show operations research in action.”

Coffee shops, 24-hour ATMs are the best locations for life-saving AEDs, 91�Թ� research shows

ullahnor — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:57:33 +0000

Coffee shops, 24-hour ATMs are the best locations for life-saving AEDs, 91�Թ� research shows

ullahnor Mon, 03/20/2017 - 16:57

Cutline

Timothy Chan (left) and Christopher Sun (right) studied data on cardiac arrest locations in Toronto to determine a list of “Top 10” businesses where placing automated external defibrillators would save lives (photo by Marit Mitchell)

Liz Do

Author legacy

Liz Do

Topic

Subheadline

91�Թ� Engineering team creates list of top 10 businesses where placing automatic external defibrillators would save lives

ATMs and coffee shops such as Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Second Cup make ideal locations for placing automated external defibrillators (AEDs), says a new study led by 91�Թ� Engineering Professor Timothy Chan and PhD candidate Christopher Sun, in collaboration with St. Michael’s Hospital.

When a patient suffers cardiac arrest, every second counts — the chances of survival decrease by 10 per cent each minute. Responding quickly can be the difference between life and death, and that means having immediate access to a nearby AED.

“Previous research on AED placements had focused on broadly defined location categories, like shopping malls or office buildings,” said Sun. “But these categories generalize many individual businesses, which have different hours, activities performed, and other unique properties that meant we could be missing critical insight on which locations are really high risk. So we wanted to get more specific: which individual locations or businesses could AEDs be placed to make sure they are accessible to the largest number of people throughout the day.”

Their findings are already making headlines.

See the CBC story

See the Toronto Star story

See the CNN story

Their new study, published today in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, looked at where cardiac arrests occur, to find locations where AEDs would be most valuable.

Map of the facilities of the Top 5 ranked businesses in terms of actual coverage in all of Toronto (image courtesy of Sun & Chan)

First, the researchers identified all businesses with 20 or more locations in Toronto – facilities such as Tim Hortons coffee shops or libraries that would make good candidates to place AEDs in.

Then they looked at the number of cardiac arrests that occurred within 100 metres of each location, during the businesses’ operating hours. Using this data, Chan and Sun calculated the “spatiotemporal cardiac arrest coverage” provided by each location or business. The specific locations and businesses were then ranked to determine a “Top 10” list of prime spots to place AEDs.

“We found that coffee shops and ATMs ranked highly across several related metrics, and that those rankings were stable over the years,” said Chan, who is the director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering at U of T and a Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health.

“What we found really interesting is that ATMs, as opposed to the more traditional businesses, are often standalone or outdoors, and are often available 24/7. They’re also universally recognizable and already have an electronic and security infrastructure – hypothetically, if we were to have AEDs paired with ATMs, it would be very beneficial,” said Sun.

Three coffee shop chains – Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Second Cup – as well as five of the big banks with many ATM locations, including RBC and Scotiabank, made the top 10. Tim Hortons was ranked first, with more than 300 shops in Toronto. These locations alone would have provided AED coverage for more than 200 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests over an eight-year period.

The researchers hope this new study could soon lead to AEDs placed in these optimal locations.

“Health organizations, foundations and policymakers aiming to develop public access defibrillator programs could use our rankings to identify promising businesses to develop partnerships for AED deployment,” added Chan.

Chan’s lab has a number of ongoing research projects on AED placements, including using drones to deliver AEDs, and optimizing AED placements in high-rise buildings.

“Ultimately, we want to get AEDs in the right locations so they are accessible when needed most,” said Chan.

Sun says cardiac arrests are unique because in the early stages they can be treated as effectively by untrained responders as by paramedics.

“That’s why finding out the best placements for AEDs is so important,” said Sun. “We have the opportunity to save lives based on our level of preparation and organization.”

Top 10 locations for AEDs based on coverage

Tim Hortons
RBC ATMs
Subway restaurants
Scotiabank ATMs
CIBC ATMs
TD ATMs
Green P public parking lots
Starbucks
BMO ATMs
Second Cup

91�Թ� researchers' drone-delivered AEDs offer novel approach to saving lives at home

ullahnor — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 17:18:22 +0000

91�Թ� researchers' drone-delivered AEDs offer novel approach to saving lives at home

ullahnor Mon, 11/14/2016 - 12:18

Cutline

91�Թ�'s Timothy Chan (left), Angela Schoellig and Justin Boutilier (right) are part of a research team trying to use drones to deliver AEDs (photo by Liz Do)

Liz Do

Author legacy

Liz Do

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Subheadline

Drone delivery could shave crucial minutes off the median ambulance response times in both rural and urban regions

When a person goes into cardiac arrest, every passing minute hurts their chances of survival. Now, a group of 91�Թ� researchers want to use drones to deliver life-saving automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) rapidly and directly to homes.

Justin Boutilier, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, envisions a future in which a bystander or family member who witnesses a cardiac arrest can call 911, and within minutes, an AED is flown to their doorstep or balcony to be administered – before the paramedics arrive.

Boutilier is working under Associate Professor Timothy Chan, director of 91�Թ�'s Centre for Healthcare Engineering, in collaboration with Assistant Professor Angela Schoellig and researchers from St. Michael’s Hospital's Rescu program, in order to turn the futuristic idea into a life-saving reality.

This project comes on the heels of research by Chan’s lab on cardiac arrests that occur outside of hospitals, and the lack of accessible AEDs in public locations during non-business hours. Boutilier is now focusing on reducing deaths from cardiac arrests that occur at home.

About 85 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Southern Ontario take place within a private residence.

“For those arrests, the public AEDs are not useful because it’s hard to get to them in time. It’s also not cost effective to put AEDs everywhere in the suburbs,” explained Boutilier.

Therefore, the survival rates are not good.

“Not only is the survival rate of private-location cardiac arrests low, the response times are also slower than public locations,” said Chan. “So we thought, we need to come up with something completely new.”

Chan and Dr. Steve Brooks, an emergency physician at Kingston General Hospital and frequent collaborator at Rescu, found a video of a prototype AED drone designed at Delft University in the Netherlands. A PhD student had developed the prototype, complete with a camera and microphone, which weighed only four kilograms and travelled 100 kilometres per hour.

“To us, the idea of using a drone to deliver an AED to private location cardiac arrests seemed like a no-brainer,” said Chan.

Of the many benefits to AED drone delivery: “You don’t have to worry about traffic. You could get the AED there faster than paramedics so the bystander can start treatment as early as possible. And that’s very important. Every minute that goes by, the chance of survival decreases,” said Chan.

To determine where drones should be stationed and how many are needed to serve a given population, Boutilier obtained historical cardiac arrest data from eight regions in Southern Ontario, including dense urban cities and sparse rural communities.

“We conducted our analysis by imagining that this technology was implemented five years ago and asking, what would the next five years have looked like?” Boutilier explained.

What they found was that they were able to shave several minutes off the median ambulance response times in both rural and urban regions, and drones could arrive ahead of ambulances more than 90 per cent of the time.

“The one challenging thing is that it’s hard to know the number of lives we could have saved, which is what we’re looking at now,” said Boutilier.

Regulatory restrictions present another challenge to implementation – aviation, including drone flights, is strictly regulated by Transport Canada. Current rules stipulate that users are prohibited from flying drones out of their line of sight.

Schoellig, the associate director of the Centre for Aerial Robotics Research and Education (CARRE) at U of T, believes these restrictive regulations won’t last for long. “It is a matter of proving safety and reliability of this new technology to the regulators. This will require more technological breakthroughs – for example, giving drones the ability to detect obstacles.

But drone technology has developed very quickly in the last five to 10 years,” she explained.

“Google and Amazon are already working on implementing delivery drones and have been lobbying the government to ease these regulations,” added Boutilier. “So if the government allows the drone delivery of commercial products, they would allow the delivery of AEDs, which is a life-saving matter.”

This past weekend, Boutilier and Chan presented their research at the American Heart Association Resuscitation Science Symposium in New Orleans, where Boutilier says he was excited to see the reactions from attendees.

“Depending on whom you talk to, the response can be very different. When I talk to medical professionals, some say, ‘That’s too futuristic,’ but when I talk to tech people their reaction is often, ‘This technology has been around for the last few years. We could do this tomorrow.’

“We’re trying to shake things up a bit within the field of health care, and change the way people are thinking about how we solve problems.”

In the near future, Boutilier hopes to pilot the project in Muskoka, a region that has a high rate of bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and the slowest ambulance response time of all the regions they’ve gathered data from.

“I think the technology is there. I think the challenge is in the details of how to make this work,” said Chan. “It’s working through government regulations, coordinating with Emergency Medical Services, and making sure the public is behind this, that they have awareness of drones and its various purposes.

“But ultimately, it’s an idea that I think can really make a huge leap forward in our ability to get defibrillators to patients. I think within five to 10 years, drone deliveries will be a reality.”

Life-saving defibrillators often behind locked doors during off-hours, says 91�Թ� study

lavende4 — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 18:01:50 +0000

Life-saving defibrillators often behind locked doors during off-hours, says 91�Թ� study

lavende4 Mon, 08/15/2016 - 14:01

Liz Do

Author legacy

Liz Do

Topic

Breaking Research

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Defibrillators

Timothy Chan

When a person suffers cardiac arrest, there is a one in five chance a potentially life-saving Automated External Defibrillator (AED) is nearby. But up to 30 per cent of the time, the device is locked inside a closed building, according to a study led by 91�Թ� Engineering researchers, published August 15 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The work was conducted by Professor Timothy Chan of the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the 91�Թ�, in collaboration with Rescu, led by Dr. Laurie Morrison at Li Ka Shing Institute of St Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

Currently, AED placement in Canada does not necessarily consider accessibility of the device during an emergency. Many AEDs are located within office buildings, schools and recreation facilities, which tend to be open for a limited set of hours during the daytime.

Toronto had 2,440 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in a public place during the study period, and 767 AED locations. Of these AED locations, 73.5 per cent were not open 24-hours a day, and 28.6 per cent were closed on weekends. Of the total number of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, 451 were located near an AED but only 354 were located near an AED when the AED was accessible, resulting in a coverage loss of 21.5 per cent.

When researchers looked at cardiac arrests during evenings, nights and weekends, which is when the majority of all out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur, coverage diminished to 31.6 percent.

The researchers concluded that a significant proportion of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur close to a public AED that is inaccessible at the time of the arrest, and a model that accounts for both location and availability when determining AED placement has the potential to significantly increase the likelihood of accessing an AED when needed.

“Our research has shown AED availability for cardiac arrests is overestimated when time factors, such as building access and time of day, are not considered,” said Chan (right). “The model considers time of day, building access and location information to optimize AED availability. Using the model, we found an average 25 per cent improvement in AED accessibility for cardiac arrests at all times of day.”

Government legislation mandating all AEDs be registered with emergency medical services dispatch centers and accessible to the public 24/7 would also improve access to AEDs.

But coverage is only one issue, according to the study’s authors: AED coverage does not necessarily equal survival, because the existence of an AED still doesn’t necessarily mean the AEDs are being used.

“Accessibility is only one piece of the larger puzzle in optimizing public defibrillator use and bystander response in an emergency,” said Chan, who is also director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering at 91�Թ�.

In an accompanying editorial comment, Robert J. Myerburg, a professor of medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said the study is important and should be included in planning strategies for AED locations, but society would benefit more by both achieving better outcomes after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and reducing the number that occur in the first place.

“Now we need a parallel effort to develop a roadmap for improving prediction and prevention of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest,” he said.

#Rio2016: How ‘moneyball’ research from 91�Թ� can help athletes reach for Olympic gold

lanthierj — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 18:55:52 +0000

#Rio2016: How ‘moneyball’ research from 91�Թ� can help athletes reach for Olympic gold

lanthierj Thu, 08/11/2016 - 14:55

Cutline

Tennis fan Professor Timothy Chan is applying his expertise in mathematical optimization to help amateur sports federations across the country make the most of their limited resources (photo courtesy Professor Chan)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Global Lens

Olympics

Rio

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Sports

Analytics

Timothy Chan

When Professor Timothy Chan sits down to watch a game of hockey, baseball or tennis, he isn’t taking a break from his research — he may be hard at work on a new paper.

A professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, Chan's expertise in sports analytics and decision modelling has been sought out by the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) in the hopes that it could provide a competitive edge for amateur athletes.

Professional sports teams been leveraging statistics to improve team performance for more than a decade. By examining detailed data about how each player performs in various situations, analysts can build computer models that attempt to predict long-term performance. The technique, made famous in the Michael Lewis book and its film adaptation, Moneyball, empowers teams that can’t afford star players to make smarter use of the resources they do have.

This year, Chan’s research team attracted the attention of the COC as part of its National Sport Federation Enhancement Initiative (NSFEI). NSFEI is a four-year project designed to help Canada’s federations improve their organizational capacity, including business operations, leadership and governance, as well as their ability to effectively recruit young, talented athletes into their sports.

“National Sport Federations in Canada are resource constrained,” says David Patterson, who leads the initiative for the COC. “We see analytics as a way to better allocate scarce resources. These benefits could apply both on the field of play and away from competition, where we work hard to attract and retain more Canadians to a lifestyle in sport.”

Chan came to Patterson’s attention in 2013 after he won the best paper award at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “Sloan is the top conference in the field, so it made sense to approach Dr. Chan as the best among the best in analytics.”

Read about the award-winning paper

This past spring, Chan travelled to Ottawa and Calgary to deliver two seminars on sports analytics. “We started to work through some areas where we thought analytics could help,” he says. “The idea is that they can narrow down the focus and propose a research project that we could execute.”

Since the seminar, Chan has been working with Tennis Canada to help increase youth participation in the sport. Chan is determining the best locations in Canada to hold winter tennis camps, based on local demand and available indoor facilities. The goal is to make sure that the resource-intensive camps reach the maximum number of potential future Eugenie Bouchards.

Chan got into the sports analytics field almost by accident. As the Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health, he primarily works on optimizing the delivery of health care. His research group has studied locations of automatic defibrillators within a city and deployment of ambulances in developing countries.

Read about Chan's work on defibrillators

However, Chan is also a big sports fan, and his models can offer insights for the sports world.

Read about Chan and hockey

“A lot of sports analytics is focused on statistics,” he says “whereas my background is in optimization.” Chan’s models not only predict future performance, they can be used to optimize performance in different scenarios — for example, determining how baseball players should switch defensive positions on the field if a player gets injured and a substitute is brought into the game.

Sports analytics is just one small branch of Chan’s research program, but he finds it rewarding from a problem-solving perspective and enjoys the chance to apply his work to help the community.

“I started this as a fun topic, but it’s definitely something I would be interested to spend more time looking at,” he says. “I think that the problems in this domain are very interesting, and there is still a lot of room for growth. There’s an opportunity to make a real impact.”

Timothy Chan

Engineering the best NHL team: 91�Թ� researchers create draft predictor for Las Vegas Golden Knights

Read more at the Toronto Star

Coffee shops, 24-hour ATMs are the best locations for life-saving AEDs, 91�Թ� research shows

See the CBC story

See the Toronto Star story

See the CNN story

91�Թ� researchers' drone-delivered AEDs offer novel approach to saving lives at home

Life-saving defibrillators often behind locked doors during off-hours, says 91�Թ� study

#Rio2016: How ‘moneyball’ research from 91�Թ� can help athletes reach for Olympic gold

Read about the award-winning paper

Read about Chan's work on defibrillators

Read about Chan and hockey