Headlines
BIF Initiative Turns Nursing Home into Laboratory for Improving Elder Care
The Business Innovation Factory is partnering with Tockwotton Home, Quality Partners of Rhode Island and the MIT AgeLab to create a real-world laboratory for developing and testing new solutions, products and models for improving elderly care. Leveraging the BIF Experience Lab platform, the "Nursing Home of the Future" will create a forum for innovators and industry partners to transform current approaches to elderly care, provide a roadmap for redesigning next generation solutions and help companies and care providers deliver better value to the burgeoning elderly population. [ read more ]
The Business Innovation Factory, Item New Product Development, the University Emergency Medical Foundation, and Rhode Island Hospital have announced a new project to better understand activity in an emergency department resuscitation or trauma "bay", the area of an emergency room where patients receive life-sustaining treatment after serious injury or a major medical event. It is in this area where doctors must seize an often brief opportunity to save a patient's life, making it essential that the environment be optimized for fast and effective treatment.
[ read more ]
BIF and FIRST Statewide Robotics Program
The sights and sounds were reminiscent of a sporting event: referees donning black and white apparel, bleachers filled with an electrified crowd and an announcer's booming voice. But this was no basketball game. This was the FIRST Vex Challenge tournament, a program where high school students built working robots and put their creations to the test in a head-to-head competition.
[ read more ]
Big Picture Company, BIF Partner to Launch Education Laboratory Alliance
The Big Picture Company and the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) announced a partnership to create an experimental platform for testing new approaches in education. Through this alliance, The Big Picture Company, a nationally recognized leader in education innovation, will partner in the build-out of BIF's Student Experience Lab and expand its efforts to create new models for teaching and learning.
[ learn more ]
Port Security Demonstration Project Serves as National Model
BIF is a partner in a unique port security communications demo funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The project uses BIF's RI-WINs wireless broadband network as part of a comprehensive network that enables emergency responders to share and distribute text, voice, and video data of activity in Narragansett Bay in real-time. A stellar example of collaborative innovation, the project has created a port security model that can be applied in coastal areas across the United States.
[ watch the video ]
VEX Robotics Program Now in Full Swing
Through our student experience lab, BIF recently launched an effort to bring Dean Kamen's FIRST Vex Challenge to each of Rhode Island's public high schools. FIRST will use Rhode Island--the first to offer the Vex program statewide--as a laboratory for testing methods of scaling the program for national expansion. On March 31, 2007, 35 teams will put their robots to the test in a head-to-head challenge that tests each robot's capabilities. The unique tournament will bring the same energy and enthusiasm to learning as typically found at school sporting events--how cool is that?
[ learn more ]
RI-WINs Wireless Project Readies for Statewide Rollout
Imagine a world where your broadband connection moves with you wherever you go. BIF's Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs) project will make Rhode Island the first state in the country with a border-to-border broadband wireless network and create a powerful platform for exploring the frontiers of wireless innovation.
[ learn more ]
RI-WINs Wireless Project Announces Plan for Statewide Rollout
The Business Innovation Factory today announced its plans for statewide rollout of the Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs), an effort to make Rhode Island the first state in the country with a border-to-border broadband network. Plans for statewide expansion are based on results from the project's piloting phase, an eight month period during which users tested applications on a small scale version of the network, and a market research study which included an operating model and pro forma financial analysis, performed by Altman & Vilandrie, a Boston-based telecommunications consulting firm. Watch the RI-WINs video.
[ learn more ]
Charlie Cannon Joins BIF as Chief Design Strategist
Charlie Cannon is serious about helping people understand the role of design in solving complicated problems. Whether teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design, "architecting" a new office or guiding projects in BIF's patient experience lab, Cannon sees design and "design thinking" as central to innovation. Why? Because design thinking, says Cannon, uses a deeper understanding of how people interact with their environment to create better products, services and places.
[ learn more ]
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