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 institutional to home settings, by helping individuals engage in their own care, by facilitating problem solving and observational learning, and by creating a network of communication and collaboration channels that extends healthcare delivery to everyday settings. 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 ooutcomes.
Speaker Biography
Elizabeth Mynatt is a Professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and the Executive Director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology. The Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) connects industry, government and nonprofit leaders with Georgia Tech’s world-class researchers and innovations to transform media, health, education and humanitarian systems. IPaT integrates academic and applied research through living laboratories and multidisciplinary projects to deliver real-world, transformative solutions that balance the needs of people with the possibilities of new technologies. Dr. Mynatt is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of ubiquitous computing, personal health informatics, computer-supported collaborative work and human-computer interface design. Named Top Woman Innovator in Technology by Atlanta Woman Magazine in 2005, Dr. Mynatt has created new technologies that support the independence and quality of life of older adults “aging in place,” that help people manage diabetes, and that increase creative collaboration in workplaces. Dr. Mynatt is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy, a Sloan and Kavli Research Fellow, and a member of Microsoft Research’s Technical Advisory Board. She is also a member of the Computing Community Consortium, an NSF-sponsored effort to catalyze and empower the U.S. computing research community to pursue audacious, high-impact research. Dr. 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