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Collaboration between government, universities and private organizations involved with e-health technology development would position the province as a hub for the emerging sector, says the president of an e-learning company.

Gary Stairs of Fredericton-based Red Hot Learning Inc. said Tuesday the province is gaining momentum toward assuming leadership in the e-health sector. For example, he said, Health Minister Mike Murphy's announcement last week that the government intends to increase spending on e-health to develop centralized patient records is a clear signal of where the province is heading.

"What the minister is talking about is not notional stuff, it's not intangible," he said. "It's a component of (the) much larger potential that we've got right here in New Brunswick."

The next move, he said, is to bring those activities together through partnerships.

"And you're going to attract new business and re-patriate people who want to return to the province to work here," he said.

Stairs sees three areas in which New Brunswick technology developers can collaborate in improving health-care delivery, while putting the province on the map for their work in e-health.

First, he said, groups can work together on animation of the human body and its interaction with disease. This form of e-learning would help both patients and medical students better understand the complex processes of infection and immune system response, he said.

A Red Hot Learning animator is developing a program that illustrates how HIV enters the body. Stairs said the possibilities for further applications are endless, and can be found through partnerships with university researchers knowledgeable in body movement.

Secondly, computer simulations of potential disasters can train public health workers on how to effectively respond, he said. Red Hot Learning has partnered with the University of Illinois to develop "The POD Game," a games-based learning exercise that showcases response methods to a bioterrorism attack.

Stairs said the province-wide move to prepare private companies for the worker shortage and productivity declines involved with an expected flu pandemic would be benefited by a similar simulation exercise. The New Brunswick Pandemic Preparedness Summit held last month saw roughly 150 people representing diverse businesses come together to learn the conventional wisdom on how to stay afloat during a global outbreak of influenza.

A partnership between businesses, public health experts and a computer simulations developer like Red Hot Learning, said Stairs, would bring that conventional wisdom to the next level.

"Over the next few months, we're probably going to approach government with technologies that can be applied to emergency preparedness, on the one hand, and innovations of health-care training on the other," he said.

The final area Stairs sees as a potential for improving health-care delivery in the province is the introduction of online health communities. These websites would provide reliable and easily understood medical advice, peer support and links to users who are interested in healthy living programs.

An expert in this emerging field of online health communities said Tuesday that caregivers, whether they be medical professionals or family members of people suffering from various illnesses, have a wealth of information they could share with others.

Lisa Neal, a professor with the school of medicine at Tufts University in Boston, said someone who has spent a length of time caring for a family member suffering from Alzheimer's, for example, could share their experiences with others whose family members have just become ill.

"You can give people the technology so they can easily set up an online health community focused on a particular health issue," she said. "The province can provide them with the links and the tech-support to make this happen."

This process, she said, would serve as a reliable supplement to medical advice provided by health professionals.

"Illness is a very emotional issue and studies show that people's comprehension and retention in a doctor's office deteriorates significantly because of the emotional burden of the disease," said Neal. "That is where the Internet can really help because people can do this from their own home and you have that possibility of peer support."

These online health communities, she said, would also link people in the same city or neighbourhood who are interested in getting involved with similar healthy living activities, like running. "When you share the same goals, it will dramatically increase the likelihood that you will stick to it."

Stairs said these three areas of potential for e-health technology development are just examples of what is possible through partnerships between government, universities and private businesses.

"The world is crying for the kinds of communications that we're capable of building," he said.

"The possibilities are endless."