OTTAWA — Through its Data for Good program, Telus said today it is working with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to support government efforts in Canada to flatten the curve and reduce the spread of Covid-19.
NSERC is the largest funder of natural science and engineering research in Canada. Telus will share insights with NSERC researchers free of charge and provide “supervised and guided access to strongly de-identified and aggregated network mobility data” to be used by NSERC-eligible researchers studying and assessing the Covid-19 crisis, says the news release.
For research projects that qualify, NSERC will offer a $50,000 grant as part of its NSERC Alliance Covid-19 grants program.
“The partnership with NSERC will allow Canadian researchers supervised and guided access to rigorously de-identified Telus network mobility data so that it can be aggregated, extrapolated and then analyzed in conjunction with other data — such as the number of positive diagnoses in a region — in order to find correlations that could help governments and health authorities develop public policy and determine where to allocate much-needed resources,” reads the news release.
“As a leading communications and healthcare technology company, we have a responsibility to help keep Canadians safe and well,” said Pam Snively, chief data and trust officer at Telus, in the release. “By leveraging de-identified and aggregated data responsibly, while protecting the privacy of all Canadians, we have a unique opportunity to detect trends and patterns that will assist in improving the coordination of healthcare and contribute to studies that could prevent or mitigate future phases of Covid-19 or other pandemics.”
In keeping with its mandate to be transparent with customers about how it handles and uses customer information, Telus has published the company’s data sharing commitment as part of its Data for Good program. The program uses the Telus Insights platform, which uses an advance approach to data analytics to help government and government agencies make more strategic and informed decisions based on real-world information. Telus de-identifies this information, combines it into large aggregated data sets to further ensure privacy, and then extrapolates this data to reveal trends and patterns about how devices move around the Telus network, says the release.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, NSERC is providing up to $15 million in total support to stimulate collaborations between academic researchers and the public and not-for-profit sectors, and industry to address pandemic-related research. Support for up to $50,000 for one-year projects is being made available immediately to NSERC-eligible researchers. More information is available here.
