Christo El Morr, PhD
Title:
Smart Health and Equity: Mitigation AI biases
Abstract:
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are becoming more present in several sectors in society today and are expected to become more pervasive in the future. These technologies have proven to be effective in a variety of fields including healthcare; however, in addition to the fact that they can provide incorrect outcomes which may inflict harm (e.g., incorrect diagnoses). AI displays an important shortcoming in the form of biases that have the potential to propagate or embolden currently existing biases including social biases, racial biases, gender biases and health biases.
This talk will present an overview of AI applications in healthcare (including in virtual care), opportunities for research in the field, and the multiple types of biases that could be exacerbated when AI is used for health. Potential future multidisciplinary research in the field will be suggested.
Short Bio:
Dr. Christo El Morr is an Associate Professor of Health Informatics, the Health Informatics Certificate
Coordinator, and former Undergraduate and Graduate Program Director at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University; he is also a Research Scientist at North York General Hospital, Toronto.
His research subscribes in an Equity Informatics perspective; it covers Patient-Centered Virtual Care (e.g., chronic disease management, mental health), Global Health Promotion for equity (e.g., equity health promotion), Human Rights Monitoring (e.g., disability rights, gender-based violence), and Equity AI (e.g., patient readmission, disability advocacy).
Prof. Dr. Sebastian von Mammen
Title:
Empowering Health Experts to Design and Use Virtual Reality Experiences
Abstract:
Since 2018, we have been working on VIA-VR, a versatile and yet accessible platform to designing, deploying, using and sharing Virtual Reality experiences in the health domain. Together with our partners, we are in the process of refining and integrating various system components, for instance to compose virtual environments, populate them with engaging contents, to scan and embed custom avatars, or to define and acquire physiological user data.
In this talk, I will present our successes so far in terms of engineering the platform but also in terms of the individual components that we have been researching and integrating. Based on our development agenda and the given status quo, I will outline potential future works, e.g. towards social experiences and Augmented Reality, and hint at potential future scientific impacts of the platform.
Short bio:
In January 2017, Sebastian von Mammen joined the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Computer Science as a tenured professor. He is heading the Games Engineering research group at the Chair for Human-Computer Interaction. Before, he had studied and worked at the Universities of Erlangen, Calgary (PhD), and Augsburg (habilitation). By now, he has authored or co-authored more than one hundred publications, has won numerous research awards, acquired significant research grants, and has been an active member of several scientific communities (especially Games, Serious Games, Artificial Life, Organic Computing). Despite his urge towards human-centered, application-oriented research, he has been setting up basic research agendas over the past few years, for instance with respect to large interactive agent-based simulations, interactive Artificial Intelligence, and ontology-driven serious games design.
Title:
Understanding health and aging to support a contribution from technology.
Abstract:
Technology has the potential to contribute to health and more specifically to the ability to live independently at home as we age. Aging is often associated with reduced functional abilities and various chronic diseases and could create a burden on families and the health care system. As everyone knows, providing help and support can be difficult when there are insufficient staff. Technology could help monitor and detect early signs of deterioration, potentially disrupting the cycle of deterioration, hospitalization and long-term care. This presentation will provide an overview of health during aging to better understand functional limitations and chronic diseases and how technological monitoring of activities of daily living offers an avenue to support independent living at home while aging.
Short Bio:
Dr. Dallaire has a PhD in nursing and is full professor at the Faculty of Nursing, Laval University, Quebec, Canada where she teaches nursing knowledge. She has done research on organization of services and on clinical topics and more specifically on aging with some projects with the use of sensors aiming at maintaining independence for elderly living in rural areas. She had been director of the PhD program for several years, dean and associated dean of graduate studies and research and is currently the scientific director of a research center. She has co-edited and edited several books on nursing.