Category Archives: tril

June 2009 Paper Accepted to EMBC 2009

Congratulations to my co-authors from UCD and TRIL on our recent paper entitled “Objective real-time assessment of walking and turning in elderly adults” which was accepted at the 31st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’09). EMBC’09 will be held during September 2~6, 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“The EMBC’09 technical program will consist of plenary and keynote lectures, workshops, symposia, and invited sessions, in which the leading experts from all around the world will present state-of-the-art reviews of rapidly-developing and exciting areas, report the latest significant findings and developments in all the major fields of biomedical engineering, and discuss government and industry related issues. Accepted high-quality original technical papers will be presented in poster and oral sessions, with up to 4-page papers to be included in IEEE Xplore and indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE. A number of student travel awards will also be made available to assist graduate students attending EMBC’09.”

Feb 2009 CHI Workshop and Surface User Interfaces

I just blogged about Surface User Interfaces on the “Evaluating new interactions in healthcare” blog. We have a paper [1] on “Design Patterns” at this workshop during CHI which this blog is being used to support. While I don’t think I can attend the workshop myself as I have trips to the USA, Sweden, Germany and Australia in the next two months my colleague Julie Doyle will attend. My PhD student Ross Shannon will also attend to present our paper on “Time Sequences” during the work in progress at CHI in Boston.

Figure 1: SharePic photo sharing system [3]

[1] Doyle J., Quigley A. and Nixon P., “Do Pattern Languages help us Structure Evaluations in Healthcare Technologies?” proceedings of the CHI 2009 Workshop on Evaluating New Interactions in Healthcare: Challenges and Approaches, Boston USA, April 2009.

[2] Shannon R., Quigley A. and Nixon P. (2009). Time Sequences. In CHI ’09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, Massachusetts, April 04 – 09, 2009). CHI ’09. ACM, New York, NY. (in press)

[3] Apted, T., Kay, J., and Quigley, A. 2006. Tabletop sharing of digital photographs for the elderly. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22 – 27, 2006). R. Grinter, T. Rodden, P. Aoki, E. Cutrell, R. Jeffries, and G. Olson, Eds. CHI ’06. ACM, New York, NY, 781-790.

Dec 2008 TRIL TTP – Tenure Success and Complete!

TRILMy tenure as Principal Investigator for the TRIL Technology Platform team is now drawing to a close. It’s been my great pleasure to have helped lead this excellent interdisciplinary team over the past 2 year period. Along with Professor Paddy Nixon of UCD and Michael McGrath, co-Principal Investigator from the Intel Digital Health Group we have grown this small team by over 50%. This growth has been to meet the needs of the clinical strands due to increasing levels of activity and secondly to increase the level of capabilities which can be utilised by the strands.

The function of the TTP is to provide TRIL with its technology research, interaction design capabilities and the software and hardware tools which support the research activities of the clinical strands namely Falls, Cognitive and Social. In the development and provisioning of these tools the TTP has adopted a philosophy, where possible, of a re-usable, open, modular platform to support the needs of the TRIL researchers and the wider research community. This has resulted in the development of the BioMOBIUS research platform. This platform is a combination of hardware, sensors, software and a graphical development environment that enables engineers and researchers to rapidly deploy technology solutions for biomedical research applications.
Some highlights of my tenure as TTP PI with our team have included:

  1. The release of BioMOBIUS research platform in April 2008 to the research community
  2. The growth of the TTP team by 50% and the relocation of this team to the research environment of the Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory UCD
  3. The proposal, planning and delivery of 3 international workshops: Intel research Amberglen, Portland, EMBS Conference, Vancouver, Canada, University College Dublin with conjunction with the EMEA Research conference
  4. The initiation of the specification process of TRIL clinical and central infrastructure setup
  5. The deployment of technology into homes to support trials by the three clinical strands
  6. The support of technology requirements for successful start-up of the TRIL clinic in St James’s
  7. The submission of Journal and Conference papers and the publication of workshop papers.

I leave the TTP knowing that I we have a stronger and more vibrant team of researchers, engineers, interaction designers, postdocs, hardware engineers and managers than when I arrived in 2007. As I move onto two new major research initiatives with national and international collaborators I wish all the members of TRIL all the very best going forward.

Nov 2008 Two CHI 2009 workshop papers accepted.

Myself and members of my research group have had two of our workshop position papers accepted for CHI 2009.

The first paper entitled “Designing for Collaboration: Professional Information Management (PIM) in Research Communities” by Umer Rashid and Dr. Aaron Quigley has been accepted for the CHI 2009 workshop on The Changing Face of Digital Science: New Practices in Scientific Collaborations. The workshop will take place on Sunday, April 5, 2009 in Boston. In this paper, we report on the results of a case study exploring the use of collaborative tools in a research community. We conducted a questionnaire-based survey among 30 researchers to establish their preferences for different tools to collaborate with their research group, school and remote colleagues. Based on the results of this survey, we offer design guidelines for collaboration tools.

The second paper entitled “Do Pattern Languages help us Structure Evaluations in Healthcare Technologies?” by Dr. Julie Doyle, Dr. Aaron Quigley and Prof. Paddy Nixon has been accepted for the proceedings of the CHI (Computer Human Interaction) 2009 workshop ‘Evaluating New Interactions in Healthcare: Challenges and Approaches’.

As healthcare technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive, moving from controlled clinical and laboratory settings to large numbers of home deployments, new challenges arise in evaluating the impact of healthcare technologies and interactions in their context of use. This paper examines the potential benefits of using pattern languages to help structure such evaluations. Pattern languages can capture experience, guidelines and methods for evaluation of new healthcare technologies and ultimately help healthcare professionals and researchers to design effective evaluations.

This workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences and ideas on how to conduct evaluations that will allow assessment of the overall impact of technology in its context of use. The workshop will take place in Boston, on April 4th 2009.

Oct 2008 TRIL wins Irish Healthcare Award

The Irish Medical Times awarded TRIL the ‘Best Use of IT in Healthcare’ at the annual Irish Healthcare Awards. The prestigious awards took place on 16th October. The awards began in 2002 and have attracted increasing number of entries from individuals and groups all around the country. Companies and organisations that develop innovative IT solutions which are applicable in healthcare delivery were invited to send an outline of their services and products into the panel of judges.

The award TRIL received was for “the innovative use of information technology in a healthcare context to improve efficiencies in the health service and deliver better patient care”. This is an amazing achievement for TRIL as a whole and specifically for the TRIL clinic . On behalf of everyone in the TTP in TRIL we would like to congratulate everyone in TRIL who helped make the winning entry for this award possible.

Aug 2008 International Workshops at EMBC Canada and Intel USA

EMBC AmberGlen BioMOBIUS workshopsAlong with my industrial co-PI Dr. Michael McGrath on the TRIL technology platform we recently demonstrated our BioMOBIUS research platform internationally. We were joined in these presentations by our colleagues Drs. Karl O’Donovan and Julie Doyle and our head of software Brian O’Mullane. We first showcased our toolkit at an event in Intel Amberglen Oregon. This event allowed those who attended to learn how to use BioMobius but it also allowed us to gain valuable feedback through a detailed user study of the event.

Following this event our group along with the TRIL co-director Terry Dishongh presented our EMBC workshop. Our event was on “Platform Oriented Approaches to Biomedical Application Development for In-lab and In-home Deployments” at the 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Here again from a different class of user, we gained feedback through a detailed user study of the event.

The success of biomedical systems that enable research both in lab and in the home is predicated on the available of ICT solutions which can be used throughout the research community. The success of technology in other domains such as the internet, personal computers has been based on a set of fundamental tools is necessary to ensure interoperability, rapid development, and user confidence. This workshop reviewed the challenges associated with development of systems to support biomedical research both in the laboratory and in the home. The key characteristics of a reusable toolbox were defined. These tools, by necessity, will be heterogeneous and diverse – ranging from body sensor networks to mobile communication devices to home based monitoring systems. Practical demonstrations of how the features have been realized in an open, extensible and reusable toolbox based on the TRIL centre’s BioMOBIUS™ research platform were included throughout the workshop.

BIOMOBIUS comprises of both hardware and software components that support rapid application prototyping and development of biomedical research systems which incorporate a wide range of monitoring capabilities.

Aug 2008 Invitation to Speak SENIOR project Brussels

I have been invited to present a talk on Ubicomp User Interfaces at the SENIOR project workshop in Brussels on Ubiquitous Computing on Sept 8th.

The SENIOR project is examining issues related to ethics, privacy, and social inclusion in the context of ICT for the Elderly. The dialogue that they are conducting on these topics will lead to a roadmap for policy and technology development as this area continues to grow and evolve. As a part of this dialogue, they are conducting a series of five workshops beginning on the 8th of September, and the first one is focused upon Ubiquitous Computing, technologies expected to have a significant impact in the living environment for the elderly in the years to come.

July 2008 BioMobius in the News

For now, researchers in University College Dublin, St James’ Hospital and the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre (TRILC) are going to use SHIMMER, but Daly expects it to move into the more commercial field within a year or so. Each kit costs €1,900. (news)

When used as part of the BioMOBIUS Research Platform, developed by the TRILC, SHIMMER helps researchers reduce the time spent developing core foundation technologies, allowing them to focus on their own specific research and, subsequently, cutting down development time for advanced medical devices, according to Realtime.

June 2008 BioMOBIUS Workshop UCD Sept 2008

BioMOBIUS Logo
University College Dublin – September 10th, 2008

The TRIL Centre is running a one day BioMOBIUS™ Workshop in University College, Dublin on September 10th 2008 for researchers.
BioMOBIUS™ platform is a closely integrated collection of hardware and software components. The platform supports the rapid deployment of biomedical applications in a drag and drop graphical programming environments that require the collection of a wide variety of datasets such as physiological and/or kinematic data. BioMOBIUS can be readily used in a variety of settings, ranging from research laboratories to people’s homes.

The BioMOBIUS research platform is aimed at researchers, clinicians and therapists who need, in the course of their work, to monitor and analyse the activity or other physiological characteristics of their patients or research subjects.

Contents:

The workshop will be a mixture of class materials, practical demonstrations and hands-on sessions. The hands-on sessions will cover the following topics using the BioMOBIUS platform
• Graphical Application Development process
• Graphical User interface Development process
• Digital signal processing tools / Review of in-built signal processing libraries
• Video processing, communication assistants etc.
• Third-party sensor integration.
• Biomedical application development
• Application program interface standards
• Block development process

TTP Team
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this workshop. The audience is assumed to have knowledge of either signal processing or biomedical experiments. To participate in the hands on sessions participants should bring a laptop with the BioMOBIUS software environment preinstalled. BioMOBIUS is free to download from www.biomobius.org.
Participants who are interested in the block development process should have Visual Studio 2005 (with SP2) also installed. They should also possess some knowledge of C++ programming.

Attendance
There is no fee for the workshop.