Title: Designing Sociotechnical Systems to Support Teams in Health Care and Health-related Contexts
Speaker: Dr. Abigail Wooldridge
Description: We will explore recent and ongoing work in the Human Factors in Sociotechnical Systems Lab, where we create, integrate and translate knowledge to improve performance, human well-being and quality in complex sociotechnical systems, found in healthcare and health-related settings through interdisciplinary collaborations.
About Dr. Wooldridge: Dr. Abigail (Abby) Wooldridge is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering Department, with courtesy appointments across campus and in the Carle Illinois Col-lege of Medicine. She recently received the Presidential Award and Medallion for her leadership on COVID-19 response efforts designing a mobile diagnostic testing system.
Title: How do older adults understand their fall risk and can technology help?
Speaker: Dr. Shannon Mejía, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Description: We engage in activities with an understanding of whether or not we’ll be successful. But how accurate are our assessments, what are the consequences of getting it wrong, and how can technology help? This presentation offers insight on older adults’ awareness of fall risk in daily life, the personal processes of gaining feedback from daily experiences, and the potential for mobile fall prevention technologies to help.
About Dr. Mejía: Shannon Mejía is an assistant professor of technology, health, and aging in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. Her research examines the processes by which older adults leverage technology and their close relationships to understand and support their health.
Class of 2021: From left to right: Neva Manalil, Gabrielle Choo-Kang, Amrutha Kumaran, Marlene Robles Granda, Asif Huq, and Tia King.
On August 3, 2021, the MS in Health Technology’s first class celebrated the completion of their degrees with a capstone presentation and award ceremony at the I-Hotel. Six students presented their final capstone project videos to members of the MS-HT Advisory Board, faculty members, capstone sponsors, and other guests. The student capstone projects were diverse and impactful: Gabrielle Choo-Kang was sponsored by the University of Chicago Medicine for her project on modeling accelerometry data related to frailty, disability, and falls.
Marlene Robles Granda was sponsored by the Applied Research Institute for her project on developing software analytics for prediction of anxiety and depression.
Asif Huq was sponsored by State Farm/ Sundial Labs for his project on developing a digital home assistant tools for older adults’ legacies.
Tia King, was sponsored by AARP for her project that validated use cases for digital health technology.
Amrutha Kumaran was sponsored by Human Factors in Sociotechnical Systems Lab for her project on developing a mobile application to support pediatric care transitions.
Neva Manalil was sponsored by the Applied Research Institute for her project on developing an application to predict anxiety and depression using speech and voice data.
Following the presentations, the Michael Vitoux Capstone Excellence Award was announced. Asif Huq received the Award, and Gabrielle Choo-Kang received an honorable mention.
Michael Vitoux is a two-time alumni of University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, earning a BA in History in 1968 and a MA in Sociology in 1972. Vitoux competed on the University of Illinois fencing team as an undergraduate student and participated in two Big Ten Championships. He is still active as a fencing instructor and referee. He became interested in supporting the Health Technology program upon hearing Dr. Wendy Rogers (Director of the Health Technology Education Program) speak about it in 2021.
Michael Vitoux Capstone Excellence Award winner Asif Huq, with Michael Vitoux and Nicole Holtzclaw-Stone
The Health Technology Education Program is launching a speaker series for Spring 2021. See below for speaker dates and topics. All talks are held on Zoom – please pre-register for the events with the links below.
Title: Board Certification in Professional Ergonomics (BCPE): is BCPE right for me?
Speaker: Travis Kadylak, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Description: Human factors and ergonomics professionals aim to optimize human performance and well-being with effective design of systems and technologies. This presentation will focus on the process, requirements, and benefits of attaining Board Certification in Professional Ergonomics. The main goal of this talk is to provide insight that will help attendees decide if BCPE is right for them.
About Travis: Travis Kadylak, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral research associate in the Human Factors & Aging Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focus is on human-robot interaction and voice-activated digital assistant usability, design, and health outcomes for users across the life-course – especially those aging with mobility disability.
Title: Designing Ubiquitous Computing Technologies to Support Aging in Place
Speaker: Elizabeth Mynatt, Georgia Tech
Description: While consumer mobile and internet of things technologies can have a powerful role in supporting the goals of older adults to “age in place” and sustain quality of life and independence, designing these technologies requires anticipating the actions of caregivers, spouses, adult children, and beyond. In this talk, I draw from a number of projects to reflect on the challenges incumbent in designing for informal care networks. These challenges include establishing trust, respecting privacy, retaining autonomy and combatting disparities. While these challenges are significant, the benefits of designing for care networks are substantial and this multi-stakeholder approach has the greatest potential for long-lasting care.
About Beth: Dr. Elizabeth Mynatt is a Regents’ and Distinguished Professor in the College of Computing and the Executive Director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology that pursues innovative research to promote healthy, productive and fulfilling lives on a global scale. Over the past two decades Mynatt’s research has focused on the role of ubiquitous computing in health. She’s currently leads the NCI funded MyPath project, creating an application that provides breast cancer patients with personalized recommendations during their cancer journey. Mynatt’s co-leads the Emory-Georgia Tech program to empower people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). She is also one of the principal researchers in the Aware Home Research Initiative; investigating the design of future home technologies, especially those that enable older adults to continue living independently as opposed to moving to an institutional care setting. Mynatt has been recognized as an ACM Fellow, a member of the SIGCHI Academy, and a Sloan and Kavli research fellow. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and chaired the CHI 2010 conference, the premier international conference in human-computer interaction. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 1998, Mynatt was a member of the research staff at Xerox PARC.
Title: Hello World: Making Health Tech Innovation Real
Speaker: Janneke Ritchie, CEO Orange Gate
Description: Designing innovative health tech is not enough. It has to make it in the real world. In this interactive session, Janneke will share insights on the messy realities of tech implementation, building a business and how to be seen (and found) in a noisy online world. About Janneke: Janneke Ritchie has spent 20 years designing & implementing solutions to enhance the adoption of new technologies for large corporations. Janneke designs solutions that empower people to take advantage of modern technologies and go digital. As the host of brickTObytes she shares real stories about adopting modern tech and how it changes lives.
