Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

On June 1 2011, our team, with faculty members from Computing Science (CS), Occupational Therapy (OT), Industrial Design (ID), and Pharmacy (Pharm), presented to the University of Alberta's Health Sciences Council our vision of (a) conducting interdisciplinary research in innovative technologies for supporting health-care services, and (b) training a new generation of healthcare professionals and technical experts who can work together to deliver these technology-based health-care services in the real world. Based on this plan, we were given access to the Smart-CondoTM simulated learning environment, a 70m2 apartment in the Edmonton Clinic Health Academy. In the past six years, our team has supervised more than 60 HQP, at all career levels, in our respective disciplines on research activities centred in this space. We have taught interdisciplinary courses and were recognized with the 2011 University of Alberta Provost's Teaching Unit Award. We have produced numerous publications on our research program, many interdisciplinary. And we have established a network of collaborations with assisted-living facilities such as Revera (http://www.reveraliving.com/), Ashbourne (http://theashbourne.ca/), and the York Care Centre (www.yorkcarecentre.ca/), where (systems and services of) our Smart-CondoTM research program are being deployed. Our agenda focuses on two research questions. (RQ1): How could home environments be designed (or retrofitted) with low-cost sensing technologies to support patients with different types of needs (cognitive, physical, sensory and emotional) and different levels of disability? (RQ2): How might observations (by self, family members, and care staff), recorded through smart and mobile devices, inform the patients personal health record and help health providers better care for them? With funding from the OT department, the Smart-CondoTM was recently renovated, with new accessibility features in the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. In the recently renovated condo, we conducted a study, where student participants spent about two hours (alone or in pairs) simulating activities of daily living, while being observed by (mostly borrowed equipment, including) sensors, Estimotes, and video cameras. This multimodal data set is uniquely rich and has already been the basis for two publications (one under review). In this proposal, we request funding to acquire equipment to be permanently installed in the Smart-CondoTM so that further studies of similar nature can be conducted with participants from our target population, at their convenience. This infrastructure will enable us to (a) advance the precision of our algorithms, (b) design a flexible interaction model to enable users to better take advantage of our analyses, and (c) to build on our newly established relations with seniors and care providers to prove the usefulness of our work in the real world.