Alex Mihailidis,

Keynote Speech Title: Disruption Ahead:  Transforming Technology for Aging and Healthcare.

Ph.D., P.Eng., is the Barbara G. Stymiest Research Chair in Rehabilitation Technology at the University of Toronto and Toronto Rehab Institute. 

Alex Mihailidis, is also the Scientific Director of the AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, which focuses on the development of new technologies and services for older adults. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy (U of T) and in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (U of T), with a cross appointment in the Department of Computer Science (U of T).   He has been conducting research in the field of pervasive computing and intelligent systems in health for the past 15 years, having published over 150 journal papers, conference papers, and abstracts in this field.  He has specifically focused on the development of intelligent home systems for elder care and wellness, technology for children with autism, and adaptive tools for nurses and clinical applications.  He currently holds several major research grants from internationally recognized funding agencies to support this work (including both the Canadian and American Alzheimer Associations, NSERC, and CIHR). His research has been completed through collaborations with other researchers in this field from Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and with various industrial partners.  Dr. Mihailidis has also co-edited two books: one from CRC Press entitled “Pervasive computing in healthcare”, and the other from IOS Press entitled “Technology and Aging”, which resulted from him being the conference chair for the 2^nd International Conference on Technology and Aging.  Dr. Mihailidis is also very active in the rehabilitation engineering profession, currently as the Immediate Past-President for RESNA (Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America).  He was also named a Fellow of RESNA in 2014, which is one of the highest honours within this field of research and practice.

Alex Mihailidis is the Barbara G. Stymiest Research Chair in Rehabilitation Technology at University of Toronto and Toronto Rehab.  He has been conducting research in the field of intelligent systems in health for the past 15 years, with a specific focus on the development of intelligent homes for elder care.  

Abstract: 

 

There has been significant research completed on the development of technologies to
support the wellness of older adults. However, the majority of these devices
have not made it to market and suffer from various limitations that make them
inappropriate for an older adult to operate efficiently and effectively.  In order to ensure that future technologies
for aging are useful, new ways of thinking in their designs is required.
Disruption in the current technology landscape is needed that will force the
way that we think about the design of these technology to change. This
presentation will discuss the notion of disruptive technologies and how we are
currently applying this concept is the design of our next generation of technologies
for older adults. 

Mary Czerwinski,

Keynote Speech Title: A New Era of Agency in Pervasive Health.

Mary's research focuses primarily on emotion tracking, information worker task management, multitasking, and awareness systems for individuals and groups. Her background is in emotion tracking and awareness, visual attention and multitasking. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Indiana University in Bloomington. Mary was awarded the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award, was inducted into the CHI Academy, became an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2010 and an ACM Fellow in 2016. She received the Distinguished Alumni award from Indiana University's Brain and Psychological Sciences department.

Abstract:

For several years now, many of us doing research into designing technology for health and wellbeing have leveraged mobile, ambient and wearable displays in order to provide feedback and insight into users' mental and physical states. We have designed our technology, in partnership with caregivers and clinicians, in order to complement and extend clinical care so that it reaches those that really need it for years. Given that, it seems like a good time to stand back and reflect on what has actually worked in terms of motivating our users to make healthier lifestyle decisions which in turn steer them towards long-term behavioral change, if needed. Specific to our research domain, emotion sensing has become ubiquitous in the physiological sensing and affective computing communities. While we leverage these methods in our research, we have found that the truly difficult problem is "what you do about it" once you have identified a user's emotional state. This keynote will describe various lessons learned from several efforts in this space, as well as traps to avoid, if you want to design engaging and life-changing interventions to help users cope positively with stress, depression, diet, exercise, sleep, and productivity. There will be a specific emphasis on the importance of agency, a new direction which we believe holds much promise for the future.