Combining Computing, Design and Healthcare ... - DLS Talk by Elizabeth Mynatt, Georgia Tech.

Date

January 17, 2013 3:30 PM –5:00 PM

Location

DMP 110, 6245 Agronomy Rd.

Speaker: Elizabeth Mynatt, Georgia Institute of Technology

Title: Combining Computing, Design and Healthcare: Charting an Agenda for Personal Health Informatics

Abstract:

Healthcare for chronic disease is the dominant cost for many healthcare systems, now and for the foreseeable future. The unique capabilities of pervasive technologies have the potential to transform healthcare practices by shifting care from acute to home settings, by enabling continuous data capture and analysis, by creating a network of communication and collaboration channels, and by helping individuals engage in their own care. In the end, the emphasis is changed from healthcare and chronic disease to a focus on health and wellness.

In this talk, I will draw from a number of research projects that combine computing research, human-centered design, and health management theory to create promising approaches for promoting wellness, supporting behavior change and delivering improved health outcomes.

Bio:

Elizabeth Mynatt is the Executive Director of the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) at Georgia Tech focuses on examining and transforming the human-centered enterprises of media, health, education, and humanitarian systems. IPaT connects industry, non-profit, and public sector partners with Georgia Tech research and technology innovations across a breadth of disciplines, departments, and research centers, integrating academic and applied research through a unique array of living laboratories and multidisciplinary projects.

Mynatt is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of human-centered computing, ubiquitous computing and assistive technologies. Her research contributes to ongoing work in personal health informatics, computer-supported collaborative work and human-computer interface design. She is also one of the principal researchers in the Aware Home Research Initiative; investigating the design of future home technologies, especially those that enable older adults to continue living independently as opposed to moving to an institutional care setting.

Mynatt is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy, a Sloan and Kavli research fellow, and serves on Microsoft Research's Technical Advisory Board. Mynatt is also a member of the Computing Community Consortium, an NSF-sponsored effort to engage the computing research community in envisioning more audacious research challenges. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and chaired the CHI 2010 conference, the premier international conference in human-computer interaction. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 1998, she was a member of the research staff at Xerox PARC, working with the founder of ubiquitous computing, Mark Weiser.

Her research is supported by multiple grants from NSF and NIH including a five-year NSF CAREER award. Other honorary awards include being named the Top Woman Innovator in Technology by Atlanta Woman magazine in 2005 and the 2003 College of Computing’s Dean’s Award.

Mynatt earned her Bachelor of Science summa cum laude in computer science from North Carolina State University and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech.