Grant: Summer Program in Aging

Statement of Interest: My research interest is to use Patient-Oriented Research (POR) with an interdisciplinary approach to co-create Virtual Reality (VR) for care delivery to OAs with lived and living experiences with dementia in hospital. My research interest is well aligned with the theme of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) 2024 Summer Program in Aging (SPA) with the focus of ageism and health research, delivery, and outcomes in OAs. POR helps to combat ageism as it fosters key stakeholders in dementia care delivery to understand the value of involving patients (people with living and lived experiences of dementia and their caregivers). My experiences and capacity gained through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary training at UBC qualify me for SPA and motivate me to continue the exploration on ageism and health research, delivery, and outcomes in OAs. Since June 2022, I have been trained by Dr. Lillian Hung at her Innovation in DEmentia and Aging (IDEA Lab) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in implementation of diverse technology in hospitals. Since September 2023, I have been supervised by Dr. Lillian Hung and Dr. Ben Mortenson for PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at UBC. I have drawn upon their expertise in POR, stakeholder engagement, assistive technologies, dementia care delivery in hospital and knowledge translation. Concomitantly, I am a trainee of Care Anywhere program under the Centre for Aging SMART, and I received training in areas such as biosensors and rehabilitation for stroke by Dr. Janice Eng. Proposed Care Path: Along the journey as a PhD student, post-doctoral fellow and faculty member, I am dedicated to advance the knowledge in POR through co-creation of technology program (e.g. VR) with patients and key stakeholders in hospital. The opportunities provided by SPA 2024 is a strong support for me to excel in my focused research areas.