Research

Applied Research for Digital Adoption

We study how Canadian small businesses, newcomers, and nonprofits actually adopt technology — then we turn those findings into better programs, open-source tools, and practical guidance that the entire ecosystem can use.

Open-Source Research Projects

We build tools in the open. Every project starts with a real problem faced by the communities we serve — and the code, data, and findings are published on GitHub so anyone can use, adapt, or contribute to them.

Active AI & Knowledge Management

Knowledge Base Chat

Organizations managing strata and condo documents need to answer questions across hundreds of pages of bylaws, minutes, and financial reports. Manual search is slow and error-prone. This RAG-powered conversational interface lets users ask natural language questions and receive AI-generated answers with source citations — eliminating the need to dig through lengthy documentation.

AWS Bedrock Claude 3.5 Sonnet OpenSearch Streamlit AWS CDK
View on GitHub
Active Document Processing

Document Extraction Service

Organizations dealing with mixed document types — native PDFs and scanned images — face a choice between expensive OCR-only pipelines and inaccurate text extraction. This hybrid service intelligently combines native PDF text extraction with OCR only when needed, optimizing for cost, speed, and accuracy. It includes smart table extraction, document categorization, and batch processing.

PyMuPDF AWS Textract Streamlit AWS CDK S3
View on GitHub
In Development Health & Wellness

Health Monitor Dashboard

People using wearable health monitors generate data scattered across multiple apps and devices with no unified view of their progress. This dashboard extracts data from health monitors and presents it through a clear, intuitive interface — allowing users to track their daily health metrics, spot trends, and take action on their well-being in one place.

Health Data APIs Data Visualization Dashboard
Repo Coming Soon
In Development Cybersecurity

Real-Time Security Streaming

Security events need to be processed in real time to detect threats before damage is done. Traditional batch processing introduces dangerous delays between event occurrence and detection. This system uses Apache Kafka for high-throughput streaming and AI-powered processing to analyze security data in real time — enabling instant threat detection and automated response.

Apache Kafka AI / ML Stream Processing Real-Time Analytics
Repo Coming Soon

Our Methodology

Good research starts with good values. These principles guide every study we undertake, ensuring our work is both rigorous and genuinely useful to the communities we serve.

01

Community-Centered

Research participants are not data points — they are collaborators. We co-design studies with the communities we serve, ensuring that research questions reflect real needs rather than academic curiosity. Participants review findings before publication and have a voice in how the research is applied. This approach draws on participatory action research traditions and is central to how TechMind operates.

02

Open Access

All of our research outputs — reports, datasets, assessment tools, and implementation guides — are published under open licenses. We believe that publicly funded research should be publicly available, especially when it concerns the digital well-being of underserved communities. Our work is freely accessible on GitHub and through our website with no paywalls or registration requirements.

03

Actionable Insights

We measure the success of our research by whether it changes practice, not just by citation counts. Every study we publish includes a clear "so what" section with practical recommendations for small business owners, service providers, and policymakers. Our implementation research, for example, includes ready-to-use configuration templates and training curricula alongside the academic analysis.

Built in the Open

All TechMind research projects are published under open licenses (MIT and Creative Commons) on our GitHub organization. Fork what is useful, send a pull request if you improve it. Research is better when it is built in the open.

Visit TechMind-Innovators on GitHub

Interested in Collaborating on Research?

We partner with universities, nonprofits, government agencies, and industry organizations across Canada. If you are working on digital adoption, digital literacy, or technology education research, we would love to explore how we can work together.

Partner With Us