Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Specific details of courses to be offered will be published prior to enrollment each term. This course can be repeated for credit up to a maximum of three times, if topic studied is different. Variable units: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

COURSE DETAILS:

Course Description: 
As technology becomes more integrated in our daily lives, technologies for health and wellness are dramatically growing and creating massive new opportunities. For example, the ‘health tech’ industry market has been estimated to reach over $100B per year, and accounts for an estimated 20-25% of technology work. This course focuses on developing skills to propose and undertake research at the intersection of computer science/HCI, interaction design and healthcare. From a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) perspective, it provides an introduction to critical needs in health and wellness, healthcare processes and regulations, and ethics protocols in health research. Students will learn how health technologies are disrupting traditional medicine, as well as research methodologies to work in the healthcare technology field, conduct health research and collaborate with clinicians. Experimentation with health technology and its infrastructures will go hand-in-hand with learning how to navigate healthcare contexts. The goal is for students to envision a new technology that addresses a real-world problem in health and wellness, and to gain familiarity with the research necessary for health technologies to be adopted and used.

Some technologies require highly specialized expertise, such as implanted devices that monitor a patient's blood chemistry and release appropriate levels of a therapeutic drug, or neurotechnologies whose effects on the brain can be observed and measured. Many other technologies are more familiar and widely available. For example, wearable devices are used to help people track, manage and change their everyday physical activity or diet. “Serious video games” can help people to rehabilitate from an accident or stroke, and artificial intelligence may be integrated to make such rehabilitation more personalized. Immersive virtual reality (VR) technologies can help people overcome their phobias. Because VR can help people to manage their pain, it has been called a “non-pharmacological analgesic.” Pharmaceutical companies have invested in VR, blurring the line between a media technology and a pharmaceutical. Increasingly, mobile technologies such as wearables, smartphones and tablets increasingly integrate biosensors to help people monitor and track their heartrate or help lower anxiety levels, while new depth cameras enable users to diagnose probable skin cancer or to monitor the effects of arthritis. Websites (PatientsLikeMe.com) intended to help people better manage their chronic conditions also unintentionally provided researchers with big data sets they can mine to find patterns, visualize phenomena, or identify the effects of new drugs beyond traditional drug trials. Genetic testing provides people with information about their potential health risks so that they can take actions to avoid them. However, interpreting what genetic results mean can also lead to anxiety, particularly if counselling to help people interpret results is inadequate. It is unclear how private and secure such data is, and whether health insurers can use it to deny patients coverage. These are examples of technologies that appear to directly affect human health. Other technologies -- like social media and robotics developed to help seniors overcome social isolation -- may also affect health in less direct ways, since social isolation has strong correlations to earlier mortality.  

Although it is estimated that 20–25% of all new technology development is focusing on health, designing technologies for healthcare domains can be extremely challenging. For example, numerous regulations intended to protect patients and their data have an impact on how technology can be used, and requires rigorous ethics approvals for conducting research. Many technologies, including comparatively technologically modest smartphone or website apps, many require certification from Health Canada or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. Moreover, regulations intended to protect patients tend to limit the access of designers and researchers to patients, to their data and to healthcare professionals.

Finally, new health technologies are disrupting traditional healthcare domains. For example, on one hand, health technologies provide people with unprecedented ways to capture data about themselves, and ideally, to change their behaviors for better health and longevity. On the other hand, when patients come to their healthcare provider with their own data, that data is often limited. Patients may assume that their clinicians are as technologically proficient as they are, have time to learn many new software applications or to integrate new data into their systems. These unrealistic expectations often puts more pressure on the average 7- to 10-minute patient visit. Moreover, neither clinicians nor patients have a reliable way to determine whether or not data collected by patients has been scientifically evaluated, medically validated or is even meaningful. People with chronic diseases might reap the most benefit of new health technologies since they must use healthcare systems that were never intended for such long-term, regular care. As promising as this is, these patients are expected to do more and more self-management -- just when their ability to do so is impaired by their chronic condition. Nevertheless, certain practices long used in HCI, such as user-centered design, can contribute to how clinicians and health researchers are required to become more “patient-centered,” and the demands for "ease-of-use" in the health domain may require industry and HCI experts to raise the bar on what ease-of-use means.

Knowing these challenges and opportunities will enable students to be better prepared to work in the growing field of health technology, armed with a solid sense of the challenges specific to healthcare and with some degree of experience. As more knowledgeable health tech. designers and researchers, they may potentially contribute not only to technological innovation, but may also have a clear and important impact on improving the workflow of healthcare professionals, the interactions between healthcare professionals and patients, and ultimately on the quality of life of patients.  

This course, is organized by five intersecting approaches:
1. The technology: we will explore how new interactive, imaging, sensing, neuro- and media technologies are being developed for healthcare.
2. Health problems: we will investigate how such technologies are intended to address core problems in health.
3. Healthcare domains: we will learn about specific healthcare domains by visiting them, talking to healthcare professionals about their workflow, and learning health regulations.
4. Disrupting domains, habits & attitudes: we will explore how such technologies are disrupting traditional healthcare domains, how people are changing their attitudes, habits and practices regarding their own health, and how important it is to become aware of the condesquences of designing health technology.
5. Research project design: we will develop and design a research project, visualize its components, and choose which component of that project to focus on in-depth.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Upon completion of this course students will be able to: 
• Understand and articulate the concepts of healthcare technology and its differing forms.
• Identify & discuss a variety of emerging new paradigms in health technologies.
• Understand processes of innovation by learning how a specific health technology is invented, researched and brought to market, particularly through start-up companies.
• Critically analyze claims made by creators of health technologies and distinguish valid scientific claims from questionable technological hype.
• Identify and discuss the concepts and methods of human-computer interaction (HCI) 
• Draw parallels between user-centered design, patient-oriented healthcare and patient-centered research.
• Analyze the design of health technology products, services and systems; focus on the role of critical design variables, the needs of patients/users and other stakeholders, and  healthcare contexts.     
• Analyze & critique direct experiences with health technologies in small class experiments. 
• Develop a health technology research project, including visualizing its components and a concrete study or prototype.
• Identify & discuss critical cultural and social issues in health contexts and the health tech. industry.
• Interact with graduate students and experts from diverse disciplines.
• Understand the basic protocols for interacting with patients and health professionals in clinical and research contexts.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

A number of neuro- and health technologies for hands-on experiments, projects and experiences will be provided at SFU Surrey's School of Interactive Arts & Technology. 
In addition, we will visit labs and facilities to see more robust health-related technologies.

REQUIRED READING: