Events Archive

We are excited that you will be joining us for the GRAND-NCE Health & Digital Media Research Workshop on Friday October 25th! We have two sites: MaRS Discovery District in Toronto, and the Harbour Centre at Simon Fraser University in downtown Vancouver. Delegates will attend in-person at each site, and we will link the two sites with state-of-the-art video teleconferencing to share ideas, listen to engaging presentations, and discover new groundbreaking ways to continue the discussions.

The primary goal of the workshop is to bring health and digital media researchers together to develop a focused, enlightened vision for the next five years of GRAND-NCE so that this joint research will not only stimulate research and commercialization in this area of rapid growth, but will also bring excellence and innovations that contribute meaningfully to technology use for the health and well-being of our community members.

During its first 5 years, GRAND-NCE brought together approximately 70 researchers and 30 projects. While a handful of projects were related to technology and health, it is clear that interest is high for research in this domain. Thus, we aim to increase these efforts for GRAND’s 5-year renewal. The results of our workshop will be pivotal to shape the direction of health-related technology research in GRAND-NCE, a cross-Canada research network and National Centre of Excellence, for the next 5-year cycle.

To date, 5 LOIs have been submitted in the preliminary phase of GRAND’s renewal; a number of others relate to healthcare in some way. To support their success and those initiatives that are to follow, we need to explore and thoughtfully frame the opportunities, challenges, and potential synergies between health and digital media researchers in order to formulate a cogent and forward-looking vision. Therefore, our workshop is designed to identify key issues and to develop innovative strategies that support our collaborative research endeavours.

Keynote Talks
Our workshop will have two keynote presentations.

Discovery Panels
Much of the day will be devoted to Discovery Panels; technology and health researchers will lead these sessions. Following a state-of-the-art review and a short panel discussion among domain experts, all attendees will have opportunities to explore specific issues. We anticipate a degree of responsiveness in the workshop. If, for example, we find that particular issues emerge that we have not anticipated, we will modify our approach.

The outcome for our workshop will be a community of technology-health researchers better appreciating each others’ rightful contributions to this area, getting excited about collaboration, and collectively contributing to a white paper based on our exploration that will be presented to CIHR in May. The organizers will draft the white paper, and will distribute it to all attendees for feedback to ensure accurate representation of our collective findings.

We look forward to your attendance and rich contributions to this seminal Health and Digital Media Workshop. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Ron Baecker, Diane Gromala, Bryn Ludlow
ron@taglab.ca, gromala@sfu.ca, bludlow@sfu.ca

GRAND NCE: www.grand-nce.ca
GRAND: Graphics, Animation & New Media
NCE: Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada