The Windsor developed ‘mega-hospital challenge’ shows the majority of residents who took part had to travel further to the proposed site than to an existing hospital.
“Sixty per cent of people who searched our application have a longer trip to the proposed site on [County Road] 42 than they do to a current hospital location, and 40 per cent are closer,” says Doug Sartori of Border City Data.
Sartori is one of the application’s creators and says the results come from just 10 days of data.
Satorti tells CTV Windsor the app allows users to measure the distance from home to a current hospital and then compares it to the distance to the proposed single-site acute care hospital on County Road 42 and the 9th Concession.
He stresses the developers are not associated with CAMMP – the group lobbying against moving the new hospital near the Windsor airport.
“What we wanted to do, primarily, was move this debate from the land of rhetoric into the land of reality and one of the things I think is really challenging is when we’re talking past each other and not talking on a basis of common facts and what this application does is it gives everybody some common data they can work from in having this discussion,” says Sartori.
According to Sartori, the app has been used by 2,600 people since its release on Feb. 21.
The app was created by Border City Data, an interest group of the local tech non-profit Hackforge.
According to Sartori, the data shows those who are farther away will travel an average of six kilometres farther, taking an extra 5 minutes. The 40 per cent of users who are closer to the proposed location will save less than four minutes on trips that are less than four kilometres shorter.
“Better data produces better debate,” adds Sartori.
The application was built by Sartori, Jeff Szusz and Kylie Tiffin, using the Google Geolocation API to determine the latitude and longitude of addresses, and the TravelTime PlatformSearch API for route and travel time information.
On March 14, Tiffin and Sartori will discuss their experiences creating the app during a Hackforge talk at 7 p.m. at the Accellerator in downtown Windsor.
Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj released a statement regarding the app.
It states: "The app unfortunately slants the results by assuming you are going to be attending the closest current hospital from where you live regardless of your medical issue. That is the major issue with our current acute healthcare configuration in Windsor-Essex. We do not have two general hospitals in Windsor. We have one hospital over two campuses. Many services are segregated to a specific campus. Cancer, Women's and Children’s, trauma, cardiac, stroke and on and on. As a result it makes your current trip from where you live artificially shorter. The new acute will house all services and be closer for residents of our region. You do not need an app for that."
The Ministry of Health and Long Term Care says the new hospital will serve more than 400,000 people in the region, providing advanced acute care services designed to meet the changing health care needs of local residents.
It will cost an estimated $2 billion.
Infrastructure Ontario has been appointed to lead the procurement process for construction of the new hospital. A Request for Qualifications (RFQ) is scheduled to be issued in 2021, but that is subject to change.
