App

Individuals suffering from a concussion who lack the resources, time or knowledge to handle their condition expertly will soon have access to a low-cost path to recovery.

Michael Hutchison, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, has developed a mobile rehabilitation tool called RHEA, after the mother of Olympian gods and goddesses.

The mobile tool, developed with support from UTEST, a U of T program that helps to commercialize research, draws on Hutchison’s clinical and research experience. He has found that starting graded aerobic exercise early following concussion can speed up recovery and improve functional outcomes – more than just resting.

“Despite such evidence, there still remains a lack of awareness and education regarding the initial medical management of concussion,” says Hutchison, who is director of the concussion program at the David L. MacIntosh Sport Medicine Clinic.

“The situation is further complicated by the fact that appointments with physicians and specialists occur approximately every one to two weeks, leaving patients at times to navigate and manage their symptoms without having the required knowledge or skills to do so.”

RHEA is an app designed to assist patients with their concussion recovery (images provided by Michael Hutchison)

He believes mobile health technologies or apps have the potential to help fill this void, as they are well-suited to serve as platforms for the self-management of various health conditions.

“They are ubiquitous, have great computational capabilities and are commonly carried on the person. RHEA will utilize these benefits through novel machine learning algorithms that will leverage user-reported feedback, as well as data acquired from the wearable technology, to provide users with recommended, personalized exercise programs over a three- to five-day period to assist with the rehabilitation process.”

What is unique about RHEA is that it is not a static system, another implication found in its name, which etymologists say means to ground and flow, much like what patients are required to do when navigating the road to recovery.

“Although RHEA’s starting point is grounded in well-established empirical evidence and clinical guidelines, moving forward RHEA will benefit from the environment of Big Data,” says Hutchison, “and as the community of people using the app grows, we will leverage that feedback to fine-tune the exercise prescriptions for a wide variety of people and profiles.”

Hutchison is looking forward to having the app available on both Apple and Android devices in the new year, following beta testing that is currently underway. Down the road, the plan is for RHEA to be tailored to health conditions beyond concussion, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.

“The benefit of structured and individualized exercise is a very promising, low-risk and cost-effective intervention,” says Hutchison.

Renaissance-era Florence comes alive through immersive, location-based storytelling app

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 20:11:25 +0000

Renaissance-era Florence comes alive through immersive, location-based storytelling app

noreen.rasbach Wed, 09/04/2019 - 16:11

Cutline

Florence during sunset: A new app takes visitors on a walking tour through Florence’s rich past by linking locations around the city to the lives of 15th- and 16th-century characters (photo by Suttipong Sutiratanachai/Getty Images)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Jackman Humanities Institute

Technology

U of T Libraries

Undergraduate Students

“Every time I crack a skull or chase down a thief, I do it as Duke Cosimo’s right arm,” says Ercole, a 16^th-century birro, or police officer, assigned to clean up the streets of Florence under Cosimo de’ Medici’s stern rule.

Ercole is one of five historically based, fictional characters in a new location-based app called Hidden Florence, the brainchild of an international team of historians specializing in Renaissance Italy, including Nicholas Terpstra, a professor of history and interim chair of the department of Italian studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto.

The iconic Italian city was one of the most prosperous and powerful cities in Europe during the Renaissance – a key centre of politics, culture and industry. The app takes visitors on a walking tour through Florence’s rich past by linking locations around the city to the lives of 15^th- and 16^th-century characters who narrate their daily experiences as users navigate the city streets.

For his part, Ercole takes app users on a tour of what he calls “the darker side of Florence,” including locations where criminals were interrogated, imprisoned and executed.

“I’ll show you a side of Florence very few people ever see,” he promises.

Hidden Florence is an app that is the brainchild of Nicholas Terpstra (left), a professor in U of T's department of history, and an international team of historians specializing in Renaissance Italy

The app’s characters – voiced by professional actors, including James Faulker of Game of Thrones – range from a labourer in the bustling textile industry to an aristocratic widow whose sons were executed for plotting a murder. The players even include Cosimo de’ Medici, the ruler who laid the foundation for generations of the Medici family’s reign over the Florentine Republic.

“The humanities are all about setting individual experiences into the broader contexts of where people live, who they engage with, and what their lives are like,” says Terpstra. The kind of digital mapping on which the app is based “allows us to see connections that we might never perceive when just looking at the words in a manuscript.”

Hidden Florence works with a larger U of T project called DECIMA, the Digitally Encoded Census Information & Mapping Archive – a robust geographic information systems (GIS) mapping tool that collects, digitizes and analyzes historical data on things like human movement and economic activity in Florence during the Renaissance.

The project uses data from three censuses of Florence conducted in 1551, 1561 and 1632, which together comprise one of the richest stores of human data available before the 18^th century.

DECIMA is the product of collaboration and innovation by a variety of senior scholars, working with undergraduate and graduate students as well as U of T staff at the Map and Data Library and the GIS Mapping Office, and supported by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

“I’ve always been interested in spaces and places, and how people live in them,” says Terpstra, whose work has delved into GIS as a research and teaching tool, particularly in exploring the spatial, kinetic and sensory dimensions of early modern cities like Florence.

“Digital mapping allows us to take something purely quantitative – like a tax census – and make it a very rich tool for seeing what made a vibrant city work. We’ve been able to draw out voices that are otherwise often obscured, like women, the poor and children.”

Asked whether there is something we can learn from Renaissance Florence, a powerful city-state from more than five centuries ago, Terpstra advises that “amoral and self-serving people will always be around, but individuals can still make a difference. If you want a better society, you have to get involved. Just remember that politics will always be equal parts chess game and knife fight.”

Terpstra credited highly skilled students who transcribed 16^th-century Latin and Italian manuscripts, assembled the database and geo-referenced the data since 2011.

“The greatest resources at U of T are the people,” he says. "Two people in particular who have been absolutely vital are Colin Rose, now an assistant professor at Brock University, and Daniel Jamison, who will be continuing to work on DECIMA as a postdoctoral fellow this year. We’ve also benefited from places like the Jackman Humanities Institute, where we had a digital mapping working group running for two years.”

In addition to U of T, partners in the app include scholars from the University of Exeter and the University of Cambridge, as well as funding from the U.K.’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and SSHRC.

U of T student team places third in national competition for app that helps children with autism spectrum disorder

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 13:37:35 +0000

U of T student team places third in national competition for app that helps children with autism spectrum disorder

noreen.rasbach Mon, 07/29/2019 - 09:37

Cutline

Ripley's Aquarium of Canada is one of the locations looked at by the MuseGO app designed by three U of T graduate students (photo courtesy of Ripley's Aquarium)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Information

Graduate Students

A team of three University of Toronto graduate students has designed an app for caregivers that can help improve the accessibility of museums for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The innovation earned the team third place at the 2019 Universities Canada Innovative Designs for Accessibility (IDeA) student competition, which aims to inspire university students to develop innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions to everyday accessibility-related barriers.

For their entry, Keren He and Yifan Zhang, both master’s students in engineering, and Christina Park, a master’s student of museum studies in the Faculty of Information, decided to focus on the barriers faced by children with ASD when visiting community spaces such as museums.

Children with ASD can experience sensory defensive challenges, meaning they have a low threshold for response to stimuli and tend to avoid certain kinds of sensory input. However, some children with ASD experience the opposite, referred to as sensory seeking challenges, meaning that they have a high threshold for response to stimuli and tend to seek out extra sensory input.

The app, named MuseGO, maps out the indoor environment according to sensory criteria, such as noise level, lighting and temperature. The virtual map then informs an augmented reality interface that places icons on the screen describing sensory experiences visitors can expect to find in each area.

This additional information helps visitors decide whether to avoid or visit certain areas. By making sensory information visible, the app improves overall guest experience, minimizing stress, exhaustion and confusion.

MuseGO is an app that overcomes systemic barriers in museums

“MuseGO was inspired by a guest speaker in a museum studies course I took at the Faculty of Information,” says Park. “The speaker discussed their institution’s sensory-friendly programming, so we decided to explore the potential of using a personal mobile device as a tool to break barriers for children diagnosed with ASD in accessing cultural institutions as well as other community spaces such as universities, hospitals, libraries, museums, and shopping malls.”

Park took the idea to Creative Applications for Mobile Devices, a course taught by Jonathan Rose, a professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering, in which students work in multidisciplinary teams to design and develop smartphone apps for a wide range of uses.

By the end of the semester, He, Park and Zhang had a working prototype of MuseGO.

After completing the course, the team decided to pit their creation against 55 other projects in the national IDeA competition. Their third-place finish in the attitudinal/system barriers category comes with a $1,000 prize. They were also encouraged by the positive feedback they received from the IDeA judges, industry and peers.

“It’s been very rewarding to have put our learning and skills together to create this app which has been recognized by the greater community,” says Zhang. “We’re currently working on improving the technical and design aspects of the app to create more intuitive and accurate indoor navigation. On-site user testing in public spaces is one of our key next steps.”

U of T students create app for carpooling

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 16:55:22 +0000

U of T students create app for carpooling

noreen.rasbach Mon, 10/29/2018 - 12:55

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Seven U of T Scarborough students are working to change the way people in the GTA carpool with a new app (photo by Antony Xia)

Topic

Subheadline

“Weav” aims to match riders with drivers to make carpooling easier

During his first year as a student at University of Toronto Scarborough, Peter Meng regularly spent $40 on gas to visit his girlfriend in Waterloo, Ont.

Frustrated with the high cost, he looked for an alternative and discovered Facebook groups where thousands of university students co-ordinate carpooling.

“My immediate question,” says Meng, “is why there wasn’t anything specializing in this?”

The Facebook groups didn’t eliminate what Meng saw as the main problems with carpooling: co-ordinating rides is tedious and there are too many drivers with no incentive to become riders.

So last summer Meng began developing Weav, an app to take the pain out of carpooling.

He soon entered The Hub, U of T Scarborough’s entrepreneurship incubator, where he connected with six other students and worked with director Gray Graffam to bring Weav to life. “I think they can actually hit this out of the park,” says Graffam. “This is a wonderful service for people.”

Meng’s team moved temporarily to the Hatchery, a U of T incubator with an engineering focus, where they spent this past summer developing a unique algorithm. (U of T has nine incubators across its three campuses for companies at various stages of development.)

The team’s goal was to make the app as simple as possible. To find a driver or rider, Weav users input their destination and preferred time of travel. The app sends an update when a match is made. Users can view information on the driver or rider and accept or decline the ride with a tap.

“There’s a beauty in the simplicity of the algorithm,” says Sean van Wyk, a third-year student in computer science and Weav’s project manager. “The matching process is really the core of the app.”

Matches are not dependent on the same start or end location – the app recognizes when riders are on a driver’s route. If there are too many drivers taking the same route, the app encourages drivers to become riders instead.

“Our vision for the Toronto area would be to fill every empty seat on the road,” says Brady Vallbacka, a fourth-year student in management and information technology, and Weav’s marketing operations specialist. “If we could do that, we could solve a lot of traffic problems.”

Weav tracks users’ locations, then sends payment through the app once riders and drivers reach their destination. Drivers set the fee, but Weav encourages them to charge only enough to cover expenses such as gas and insurance.

Location tracking is part of the app’s safety features, along with tools that allow users to report terms-of-use violations such as damaging a car.

The name Weav is a play on the idea of weaving through traffic and a reference to bringing people together. Imagine, van Wyk says, several people who meet through Weav because they are going to the same hockey game. “It provides a lot of value and a lot of ways for people to actually connect.”

While the team members initially targeted long-distance journeys, they began looking at commuting after Vallbacka learned that many U of T co-op students won’t travel between east and west campuses, even if it means having a greater number of placements to choose from.

“I guarantee there’s one student doing that commute every day and they probably have four empty seats,” he says. “If they could get connected easily, they’d have more job opportunities.”

Weav created a “scheduled commute” feature to help connect these students and other regular travellers. The team is working to release a prototype of the app by early next year.

Daily planning app from U of T entrepreneur helps children with behavioural and learning challenges

ullahnor — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 20:19:48 +0000

Daily planning app from U of T entrepreneur helps children with behavioural and learning challenges

ullahnor Tue, 03/21/2017 - 16:19

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Pierre Séguin (left) and his son, Leo (right), show off Brili, a daily planning app for kids

Dan Haves

Author legacy

Dan Haves

Topic

Breaking Research

Medicine

Children

Faculty of Information

App

Behaviour

Learning

For children with behavioural and learning challenges, getting ready for the day can be a struggle. Waking up, getting dressed, eating breakfast and heading out the door on time is never a guarantee.

Pierre Séguin, whose son faced some of these challenges, knew all too well how difficult it could be for kids to organize their day, even with the help of their parents and caregivers. His solution?

He took some of the features of project management software he was using every day at work in the tech industry and used them to create Brili, a mobile-based daily planner that makes a game out of routine tasks. Brili is part of the Faculty of Medicine's Health Innovation Hub and the Faculty of Information's Semaphore Research Cluster. Séguin is an expert-in-residence with Semaphore.

Learn more about Entrepreneurship@UofT Week March 27-31

He spoke with U of T's Dan Haves about how Brili works and the future of this software.

Where did you get the idea for Brili?

My son had various behavioral challenges when he was very young and daily routines were awful for our family. We spoke to many experts as we tried to help him. They advised us to give our son structure and consistency, and use lists, pictures and timers to help him remember steps in the routine.

I was a software product manager working with teams that used big LCD dashboard screens to show a project’s status and keep multimillion-dollar technology jobs on track. So I thought, ‘Why can’t we create something like this for kids?’ Daily routines are just little projects that happen every day, and our son needed a dashboard of his own. That realization unleashed a flurry of ideas to gamify routines.

What are some of the challenges that Brili helps children overcome?

Brili is especially helpful to kids who have trouble with executive function (EF). EF is the role our brain plays in impulse control, keeping us focused, aware of time passing, remembering what we’re supposed to be doing and other functions many people take for granted. ADHD, autism and other learning challenges directly impact EF.

Brili gives kids gentle and consistent prompts to start regular routines like getting ready for school or bedtime, and helps them stay on task with audible reminders and visual cues.

For example, parents can program Brili to give their kids reminders to do things like get dressed or brush their teeth during the morning routine before school. The app also factors in the time available to complete each item on the list. The prompts can also help parents check in with their kids to ensure they get help when they need it.

What’s next for Brili?

We’re building new features into Brili that will make it helpful in a classroom environment so kids can benefit from the program at school.

We started Brili to give every child and parent access to fun, stress-free daily routines so families can just enjoy being families. As mobile technology becomes more accessible, it’s exciting to see our goal become reality. Next, we want to help people of all ages in more contexts to manage and use their time better.

Aspiring entrepreneurs combine artificial intelligence and medicine at U of T

lanthierj — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 14:11:33 +0000

Aspiring entrepreneurs combine artificial intelligence and medicine at U of T lanthierj Fri, 04/01/2016 - 10:11

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Didier Landry and Raad Yameen (photo by Carolyn Morris)

Carolyn Morris

Author legacy

Carolyn Morris

Topic

Dustin Kut Moy Cheung

Raad Yameen

Subheadline

“We want to help get these creative ideas for improving health care off the ground”

Imagine you’re one of the 50,000 people in Ontario addicted to opioids. You have a panic attack in the middle of the night. You may live in a remote area with little access to counselling services — but even if you have regular access to a therapist, no one’s around at that moment to talk you through it.

Instead of reaching for pills, though, you turn to the support of your “pocket counsellor,” right on your smartphone. This virtual counsellor will have an actual conversation with you — asking questions, and “listening” to your responses.

[quote (class="additional class" | author="Raad Yameen")]“It asks intelligent questions depending on your answers just as any human would do in a real conversation”[/quote]“It asks intelligent questions depending on your answers just as any human would do in a real conversation,” says Dr. Raad Yameen, a recent medical school graduate and master’s student in the Faculty of Medicine’s new Translational Research Program. Yameen is one of three U of T students in medicine and engineering working on the artificial intelligence counselling app through their startup dubbed Project MIToc. By recognizing “change talk” — any expression like “I really need to,” “I should,” “I have to do something” — the app can pick up on that and even remind you of some of the reasons you’d given in the past for wanting to stop using.

Yameen and his team now have $5,000 to help develop their idea further. They were one of a selected group of young innovators gathered at U of T this week to pitch their ideas as part of the HealthEDGE initiative, led by U of T-based accelerators in medicine, engineering and computer science. With a panel of judges including entrepreneurs and industry leaders in health — and six fellowships of $5,000 each for the top ideas — it was akin to a “Dragons’ Den” competition for health care.

“We want to help get these creative ideas for improving health care off the ground,” says Professor Joseph Ferenbok, co-director of the Health Innovation Hub (H2i), the Faculty of Medicine’s accelerator. “We started the year-long initiative with an open call for people to submit challenges, ingenuity gaps, or ‘bugs’ in the health care system. Then we invited students and other innovators to find solutions.”

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Yameen, along with Project MIToc co-founders — software engineers and computer engineering master’s students Didier Landry and Dustin Kut Moy Cheung — hope their theory-driven, evidence-based and patient-centric technology will lead to better support for addicts, and cost-savings to the health system.

Other winning ideas included a tool for the early detection of diabetes-related vision loss dubbed “iProbe,” which allows psychiatrists to monitor patients with schizophrenia for worsening symptoms based on their social media and other online communications; a personalized drug profiling technology for patients with cystic fibrosis and other conditions serving as a personalized “clinical trial in a dish”; a mobile video health program that would connect rural youth with mental-health support; and a robotic rehabilitative exoskeleton for kids with cerebral palsy. The iProbe project also won the community choice award.

With iSchool entrepreneurship instructor and HealthEDGE 2016 coordinator Adriana Ieraci moderating the event, the judges challenged each presenter with questions on feasibility, privacy concerns, pricing and competitors. Leading up to the event, mentors from H2i, The Entrepreneurship Hatchery and the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL) coached the teams and helped them refine their pitches.

But the work doesn’t end here. A central goal of the HealthEDGE initiative is to help turn these ideas into reality. With the fellowship money, along with a network of contacts and potential backers through community, health care and industry partners — including the University Health Network, Rouge Valley Health System Foundation, Johnson & Johnson Innovation (JLABS), Autodesk and IBM — the winning innovators are given resources to put their smart solutions to work. They’ll be presenting their proofs of concept at a HealthEDGE demo day in the fall.

Winning Projects:

ReX: a robotic exoskeleton suit to help children with cerebral palsy learn to walk
VideoHealth: a new mobile way to connect rural youth with little access to mental health care to urban mental health providers, including psychiatrists using asynchronous video communication.
Project MIToc: a mobile solution for motivational counseling and commitment enhancement for people suffering from opioid addiction.
XVIVOS Biosciences: a high-throughput, personalized drug profiling technology for patients with certain rare & neglected diseases
Project Nash: a modular tool that allows psychiatrists to collect feedback from members of a patient's support network, as well as automatically analyze patient's audio logs and social media for inconsistencies that could be a warning sign of relapse
iProbe: a sensing device for pre-symptomatic ocular disease detection

Judges:

Professor Paul Santerre, co-director, Health Innovation Hub
Andris Lauris, mentor-in-residence, Health Innovation Hub
Merry Wang, senior research Scientist, Autodesk
Gail Garland, president and CEO, Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization (OBio)
Jonathan Rezek, business development, IBM Canada
Kendra Delicaet, managing director, OpenLab, TGH
Katherine Schwenger, co-chair, Institute of Medical Science Students Association (IMSSA)

Google Demo Day for women gives top prize to Bridgit startup

sgupta — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 13:45:50 +0000

Google Demo Day for women gives top prize to Bridgit startup sgupta Thu, 12/10/2015 - 08:45

Cutline

To develop their startup, Lauren Hasegawa and Mallorie Brodie sought help from Creative Destruction Lab and The Next 36 at the University of Toronto

Olivia Tomic

Author legacy

Olivia Tomic

Learn more about startups and entrepreneurship at U of T

Google Demo Day is held each year but this was the first time Google for Entrepreneurs chose to create a second event dedicated to female founders, addressing the fact that the vast majority of funding is invested in male-led ventures.

“We know that women around the world are creating and building incredible tech companies,” said Mary Grove, director of Google for Entrepreneurs. “We aim to help connect them with mentors, access to capital and shine a spotlight on their efforts.”

While Google Demo Day doesn’t offer any immediate prizes, Bridgit will reap the benefits of getting the tech giant’s stamp of approval. This could include getting their foot in the door with investors, attracting the attention of potential large corporate partners and being able to hire more quickly.

Startups who have pitched at the previous two Demo Days have gone on to raise approximately $3.5 million dollars in funding from investors who attended the pitches, followed by an additional several million dollars after the event.

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Stuck in traffic? These pedometer apps think you're walking

sgupta — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 13:03:06 +0000

Stuck in traffic? These pedometer apps think you're walking sgupta Mon, 12/07/2015 - 08:03

Cutline

Researchers found several popular pedometer apps have an “an unacceptable error percentage” (photo by iStock)

Valerie Iancovich

Author legacy

Valerie Iancovich

Topic

Breaking Research

App

Exercise

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Health

More News

Research

Subheadline

Study finds flaws in popular downloads for phones

GPS navigator, recipe finder, camera, music player: the phones that most of us use today go well beyond voice-to-voice communication.

However, if you thought your smartphone could also serve as a pocket-sized personal trainer, newly-published research has found that three of the most popular free apps designed to track fitness are seriously flawed.

The evaluation, led by Professor Guy Faulkner of the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education and KPE master’s student Krystn Orr, appears in the journal BMC Research Notes.

“We know that more and more Canadians want to take their health into their own hands and these apps seem like a good way to do just that,” Orr says.

“Self-evaluation can be very effective in lifestyle change as well, so it’s important that people are getting the most accurate information possible and using tools they can trust.”

The work was inspired by Rise at Work, a larger project intended to evaluate workplace physical activity at the University of Toronto. (Read more about the project.) Researchers looking for a cost-effective, accessible way to track steps noted that there had been few published research papers looking into commercial smartphone pedometer applications.

Using iPod apps to help diagnose, treat alcohol withdrawal

sgupta — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 16:29:46 +0000

Using iPod apps to help diagnose, treat alcohol withdrawal sgupta Tue, 09/02/2014 - 12:29

Cutline

(photo by CarbonNYC via Flickr)

Marit Mitchell

Author legacy

Marit Mitchell

Topic

Breaking Research

App

U of T researcher develops mobile rehab tool to help concussion patients manage their recovery

Renaissance-era Florence comes alive through immersive, location-based storytelling app

U of T student team places third in national competition for app that helps children with autism spectrum disorder

U of T students create app for carpooling

Daily planning app from U of T entrepreneur helps children with behavioural and learning challenges

Learn more about Entrepreneurship@UofT Week March 27-31

Aspiring entrepreneurs combine artificial intelligence and medicine at U of T

Winning Projects:

Judges:

Google Demo Day for women gives top prize to Bridgit startup

Read more about Bridgit

Read more about The Next 36

Learn more about startups and entrepreneurship at U of T

Stuck in traffic? These pedometer apps think you're walking

Read more about U of T research on the importance of walking

Using iPod apps to help diagnose, treat alcohol withdrawal