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According to the Institut de la statistique du Québec, by 2021, 1.75 million people aged 65 and over will represent 20% of the province’s population, and by 2041, this will rise to 26%. How can AgeTech help Quebec’s older adults live healthy, independent lives?
Come and meet AGE-WELL researchers, graduate students and industry professionals based in Quebec. Find out more about their work and collaboration opportunities! Connect with members of some of Quebec’s top research organizations focused on age technology innovation! Several short presentations will highlight regional projects in the first hour, followed by a 30-minute networking session to establish further collaborations in this field across the province.
Featured organizations:
Centre de recherche institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM)
Réseau québecois de recherche sur le vieillissement (RQRV)
Ingénierie de technologies interactives en réadaptation (INTER)
Réseau provincial de recherche en adaptation-réadaptation (REPAR)
Consortium santé numérique- Université de Montréal
Presenters:
Barbara Delacourt is a doctoral candidate in speech-language pathology under the supervision of Professor Ana Inés Ansaldo. She is studying the maintenance of communication between people living with dementia and their caregivers in order to reduce their social isolation and caregivers’ burden. Specifically, she is interested in co-viewing videos that elicit positive emotions to foster communication. By collecting multimodal data (i.e. psychophysiological, verbal, and gestural responses) that will be analyzed by both human expertise and artificial intelligence, she is aiming to better understand how to facilitate communication with caregivers.
Hui Chen is currently pursuing a PhD in the Computer Science Department at the Université de Sherbrooke, under the supervision of Drs. Sylvain Giroux, Charles Gouin-Vallerand, Kévin Bouchard, and Sébastien Gaboury in the DOMUS laboratory. She is an AGE-WELL and RQRV EPIC-AT fellow for 2023/24, and an AGE-WELL HQP-AC representative for Quebec. Her research focuses on the use of artificial intelligence to recognize activities of daily living and understand the routines in residents’ contexts. In addition, her research focuses on remote monitoring and cognitive assistance for frail seniors using the ambient sensor infrastructure deployed in senior housing communities.
Dr. Yves Joanette is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Deputy Vice-Principal Research at the Université de Montréal. He has previously served as the Scientific Director of the Institute of Aging of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Executive Director of the CIHR International Collaborative Research Strategy on Alzheimer’s Disease and Chair of the World Dementia Council. Dr. Joanette’s research interests include the cognitive neuropsychology of aging and communication disorders. Using novel cognitive and neuroimaging approaches, he has contributed to advancing knowledge regarding the neurofunctional reorganization that allows for the maintenance of communication skills with age, the effects of lesions in the right hemisphere of the brain on these skills, and cognitive disorders in Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Philippe Archambault is an occupational therapist and professor at McGill University’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. He is also a researcher and co-director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation. His work focuses on the use of technology in rehabilitation. He is particularly interested in wheelchair mobility. Since 2017, he has also been leading the intersectoral initiative called “Inclusive Society”. This provincial initiative aims to improve the social inclusion of people with disabilities through participatory research.
Dr. Pascal Smith holds a PhD in cellular and molecular biology from Université Laval. His academic research experience has led to a number of technology patents. In addition, his experience in the healthcare and social services sector led to the deployment of a CIHR-funded study of 4,000 seniors in order to understand users’ early return to emergency departments. Subsequently, the skills he acquired in Quebec’s innovation network enabled him to structure scientific communications for a Halifax-based biotech company. Over the past 15 years, his varied skills have enabled him to make an impact in various sectors, including academic and clinical research, innovation, business, life sciences, and the healthcare network.
Sylvain Giroux is a professor in the Computer Science Department at the Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the Université de Montréal in 1993. He has contributed to the development of information systems in interdisciplinary contexts and fields as varied as distance learning, geophysics, e-commerce, telemedicine, task assistance systems, cognitive assistance, and smart homes. His current research interests include cognitive assistance, remote monitoring, smart homes, the Internet of Things, activity recognition, augmented reality, and crypto-currencies. Sylvain Giroux co-founded DOMUS, an interdisciplinary laboratory at the Université de Sherbrooke (http://domus.usherbrooke.ca). DOMUS has extensive research experience in the use of participatory design, ambient intelligence, and living labs for designing, exploring and evaluating a wide range of innovative cognitive assistance solutions aimed at promoting the autonomy of frail people, particularly cognitively impaired seniors and traumatic brain injuries. He has been a researcher at AGE-WELL since the very beginning.
Dr. Hubert Kenfack Kgankam obtained a PhD in Computer Science, Ambient Intelligence option, from the University of Sherbrooke in 2019. He subsequently specialized in ambient human-machine interactions. Dr. Ngankam’s research takes place in an interdisciplinary research team. He has contributed to designing, developing and deploying numerous cognitive assistance and telemonitoring applications to help older adults and frail people with cognitive impairments to remain at home. The solutions developed integrate living laboratories, participatory design, the Internet of Things and ambient intelligence. They have been applied in particular to the supervision of activities of daily living, meal preparation and night-time wandering. They have been validated in a real-life environment in some fifty homes. He will take up a new professor position in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sherbrooke in January 2024.