We continue our tour of our friends and colleagues in Canada to catch up with doctors Alex Mihailidis and Tilak Dutta from the research arm of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, KITE. Find out what scientists at KITE are doing to help people age in place, and improving the lives of people living with the effects of disability, illness and aging through prevention, restoration, enhanced participation and independent living. And find out more about where Pooja got her start.
Host: Dr. Mary Goldberg, Co-Director of the IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh
Guests: Dr. Alex Mihailidis, Barbara G Stymies Chair in Rehabilitation Technology, and lead of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics team at KITE, and Dr. Tilak Dutta, Scientist at the Toronto Rehab Institute.
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IMPACT Center | Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Full Episode Transcript | PDF
Timestamps:
01:15 Alex Background & Intro
02:21 Tilak Background & Intro
03:28 KITE Center - What they do and the research teams
05:12 Collaboration, Commercialization and Translation
07:51 The Home Lab and End-Users
14:47 KITE Startups - Braze Mobility
18:15 Research, Funding & Support
SPEAKERS
Alex Mihailidis, Tilak Dutta, Mary Goldberg
Mary Goldberg 00:04
The IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh supported by the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, proudly present ImpacTech. Today's episode is Collaboration is Key for KITE with our guests, Dr. Alex Mihailidis, Barbara G. Stymiest Chair in Rehabilitation Technology, and lead of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics team at KITE and his colleague, Dr. Tilak Dutta, a Scientist at KITE and part of the home and community team. Recorded remotely from my soundproof bedroom closet in Pittsburgh, PA. This is your host, Dr. Mary Goldberg, and welcome to our 11th episode of the ImpacTech podcast series. So thanks again, both Alex and Tilak for participating in this discussion. We're really excited to have you. And I'd like to start by providing our listeners just a little bit of some background and introduction on both of you. So Alex, if you wouldn't mind kicking us off.
Alex Mihailidis 01:15
Great. And thank you very much, Mary, for for having me on. This is really wonderful to be talking about this topic with you and Tilak as well. So my name is Alex Mihailidis. I'm a professor at the University of Toronto and also the Barbara G. Stymiest Research Chair at Toronto Rehab Institute. My area of research for almost the past 25 years has been around developing technologies to support older people to remain in their homes and communities for long as possible, and also to support their family caregivers. Part of this research really is focused on the development of new future technologies, I would say, you know, smart homes, robotics, artificial intelligence. The other hat I wear is also as the scientific director of the AGEWELL National Center of Excellence, which focuses on across Canada attempt an effort to not just support the research and development of these technologies, but actually to move them towards knowledge, translation, and commercialization. So perhaps I'll stop there.
Mary Goldberg 02:18
Thank you so much. Tilak, welcome.
Tilak Dutta 02:21
Thank you. Thanks for having me, as well. My name is Tilak. I'm a scientist at Toronto Rehab Institute. I'm an engineer by training and have cross appointments at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, and my work overlaps a lot with Alex's at at Toronto Rehab, I would say the helping people with disabilities broadly, live independently and safely in their own homes as long as possible is part of my goal. The specific areas that my team looks at is things like trying to prevent falls when we're going out in slippery weather in the winter, trying to support caregivers when they're supporting people at home who need extra support. So if they're lifting and moving people bathing and toileting people, how do we get the family caregiver make sure they're safe when they're doing those activities. And we're also trying to make sure we don't get new illnesses and injuries. As we're as we're doing these activities, that new conditions like pressure injuries, for instance of someone if they're at home, and they're not moving at all, and they're spending a lot of time in bed or in a wheelchair, we want to make sure that their skin stays healthy and finding ways to do that.
Mary Goldberg 03:28
Thank you very much. And you're both a part of the KITE Center. I'm interested in knowing a little bit more about what the center does, and maybe a little bit more about how it's organized in terms of its research teams.
Alex Mihailidis 03:40
Why don't you go ahead Tilak and start?
Tilak Dutta 03:43
Sure. So I would say broadly, KITE tries to support older adults in in staying healthy. So we have different research teams that focus on the different types of illnesses that an older adult might experience. So someone after a stroke, someone after a heart attacks, we have different research teams that try to focus on those specific conditions. Alex and I are part of teams that look more broadly at conditions and how we support people in their homes, as we've described. And I would say the other component to KITE is trying to make sure people don't end up needing treatment from a place like a hospital like trauma rehab Institute, so preventing illness and injury as much as possible.
Mary Goldberg 04:26
Thank you. Go ahead, Alex.
Alex Mihailidis 04:28
Yeah, so maybe, maybe I can just add to that memory a little bit that. You know, as Tilak said, prevention is a big aspect. And so I think it's really important for listeners to understand that, you know, we're taking a very broad definition of rehabilitation. It's not just about being reactive, right. It's about being proactive. And I think that's an important point that we should just be reiterating that. Trauma Rehab in KITE has really been a leader in that approach to rehabilitation, I would say starting it almost 20 years ago under our previous director, Dr. Geoff Fernie. And it's really a mentality that we really tried to strive for, and all that we do in our trainees and our students, etc.
Mary Goldberg 05:12
Thanks, Alex, I agree that that philosophy is, is there a great principle and hopefully something that we can touch upon several times throughout our discussion here today? And so you mentioned Tilak, that you are part of research teams are collectively part of research teams. Could you describe a little bit about where you and Alex have collaborated, specifically, and perhaps your collective roles in commercialization and translation?
Tilak Dutta 05:41
Sure, yeah. Yeah. So I think that the overlapping kind of thing that Alex and I both are focused on is helping people in their homes. And so you know, one of the ways that we that KITE helps that research really move forward is through the specialized lab spaces that we have access to. So one of them is what we call home lab, which is kind of a typical home space, it's a single floor space that has living spaces, it has bedroom, it has a bath, it has a kitchen, all the fixtures work. So you know, you can really bring people into that space, and try to understand, you know, someone who's just had a stroke, for instance, and they have some sort of mobility challenges, as many people would, how, you know, how do we set up that space, so that that individual in their family can stay safe, and go through all the activities that they'll have to go through. And so these labs help us test out some of our, you know, some of the solutions that were coming up some of the products that we're developing, they help us engage partners with, it's a company, you know, as investors, if we can bring them in, show them how these different ideas might work in a space that simulates what the thing is going to do in the real world. And hopefully, sort of build a build relationships, build trust, and start to start to get a broader group of collaborations going to hopefully get these things out into the real world.
Mary Goldberg 07:10
I love that approach, I'm sure that the idea can be translated with much higher fidelity, right, when the investors whose science this may not be right, are able to wrap their heads around it and visualize themselves or their loved ones using what you've developed. That's super cool. Yeah.
Tilak Dutta 07:28
And right away, you know, a lot of our early prototypes, you know, our students are very bright and come up with very creative ideas. But sometimes just getting people to test something out, you know, getting a real end user to come into that space and make use of a product, it points out the obvious issues that are usually there as a first iteration, and then sends our students back to the drawing board so that they can iteratively improve on these things.
Mary Goldberg 07:51
Super cool. I guess my perception is that Alex may have been a little bit more engaged or is still perhaps a little bit more engaged in the actual technology translation aspect. And I'm interested, Alex, in some example, technologies that you've developed and whether you have used the home lab in testing or assessing all of them with end users.
Alex Mihailidis 08:18
Yeah, that's a great question, Mary. And, absolutely, we've done that. And this has happened on a couple levels, one in my own personal research, and second, the angel network that we support, we've supported Tilak in his great work as well towards him commercializing or translating some of his products. In terms of our lab, we've put a couple of products out there right now, one has been our fall detection system that we're currently still working on licensing out to a particular company, our fall detection that doesn't require anything worn on the person that it's all based on computer vision, and artificial intelligence, was completely developed and tested in the home lab. And this was not just us testing, how well does it detect falls and work, but actually doing user centered research with it and having older people and caregivers come in and tell us what they think about how it looks and how it operates. And you know, how they would like to set it up in their own homes. And so we learned a lot through the home lab itself, just from doing those kinds of, you know, weather experiments with the technology where we have people come in and simulate falling, or again, these kind of focus group qualitative based research studies. And that's something that just unique to my team, we see that a lot obviously, Tilak can probably tell a lot of stories of his own work, but others as well at KITE that use the home lab and in other spaces to collect initial data, but then also then to move that technology forward
Mary Goldberg 09:50
Through the full product development process at what stages or phases do you involve the end users and when it even be that they would visit the home lab on several occasions?
Alex Mihailidis 10:05
Yeah, well, you know, our philosophy is we engage the users as early as possible in the research. And sometimes that even means more often starting to mean having the older adults and the caregivers as actually part of the research teams. And so they are actually physically working with us are coming to our design meetings, which we try to actually hold right in the home lab, just in order to kind of just have people always thinking about the environment that we are developing these technologies for. And then even with our studies, often we'll have the older adults come in attend several sessions. Now. It also depends on the target user. Right? So for dealing with healthy older people were coming into the home lab on a regular basis is going to be okay, then they participate. We also do a lot of work with older people with dementia, for example. And they are, you know, obviously, it's quite difficult and taxing on them and their caregivers ask them to come in repeatedly. So we really tried to base our research and the amount of participation based on who we're designing for and working with.
Mary Goldberg 11:13
Collaboration is so critical to your process. Do you have other stakeholder groups that you collaborate with regularly, and if so, who are they?
Tilak Dutta 11:23
Sure sure I can start. In our work, for instance, like to give another example of a work that we've done in home lab is funded by Alex's AGEWELL program, we develop this product called posture coach, which is designed to be worn. The idea is that if you have as I was mentioning, you know, back injury risk is a big challenge for people, if they're thrown into this role, you know, something happens suddenly to someone in your family, and someone is thrown into a role as a primary caregiver. And they may have to lift and move people all of a sudden, without really having a background in these kinds of activities previously. And so the idea was, could you give someone a little wearable device that they wear that beeps at them, or vibrates to warn them if they're bending the wrong way. And so posture coaches this thing you wear, and we tested it in home lab and, and it was developed with, first of all personal support workers who do this type of work professionally, to get their ideas on, you know, how it would feel to have this thing beeping or buzzing at you in someone's home, if it was used in that context, we looked at it through kind of the lens of a family caregiver where maybe it's a little less important. If it beeps and buzzes while someone's trying to do something, maybe it's more important that they understand. And so in the different contexts, the different types of users that were using with it, we were able to get a sense of, of how those things would happen. In some cases, we would hire patient actors to come into home lab and pretend like they were using the bathroom and using the bathtub and things like that, and watch how a professional would go through that activity, a personal support worker would go through that activity and how using the device, you know, does it get wet? Does it get bumped against the wall when they're in a tight space? Does it you know, how can we design the thing to be as to work in all those different scenarios is as efficiently as possible.
Mary Goldberg 13:14
I find myself thinking about my posture, as you say that our listeners can't see us. But I can see you and you can see me sounds like a great device. And like just from the economic perspective, right, something that we could all benefit from really cool. And so did that work result in a startup Tilak?
Tilak Dutta 13:34
So it hasn't yet what we've learned so far, if this is a fairly, you know, relatively new project, what we've now shown is that this was a study that ended just last year, what we showed is that this is a device that if you wear it for a couple of days at an hour at a time, that you don't need it anymore. So that it's so it actually shifts the way you move, you build some muscle memory and and you actually don't need it anymore. So now that we have that in mind, what we did is we learned over a period of two months, if you have someone wear it for two days consecutively. And you can look at them after two weeks and two months, what you see is that their behavior has changed in that they've you could say most people have learned how to move in a safer pattern of movement. So with that in mind, we are now thinking about how do we bring this to different populations. Again, it might be different for you know, so this could be in a more appropriate product. Perhaps for someone like a personal support worker who goes through a training process and orientation process, you could easily get someone like that to wear it for a short period of time versus the family caregiver. How do we get that to them? We're not sure exactly. But we're starting with a personal support worker kind of model.
Mary Goldberg 14:47
Great. Alex, perhaps you could talk a little bit about what startups have come out of KITE already and how that transition took place moving out of the university.
Alex Mihailidis 14:58
Yeah, so um, maybe I'll tell you about the example that I'm most involved with as a co founder, that's Braze Mobility. And so Braze has developed devices that you can add to an existing power manual wheelchair, that essentially add some intelligent features such as ensuring that you are not colliding with various objects, and you're backing up for navigating a tight space, etc. So this example is actually really nice, because it started as early research at kite many years ago, probably about 12 years ago now. And the research was actually then picked up by a trainee who did the work for PhD. And then, at the end of her PhD, she realized, maybe I don't want to be an academic may actually, you know, take what I've done during my doctoral work and move it out as a commercial product. So she then during her postdoc at KITE was given the opportunity to, again, not focus postdoc on academic publications, etc, but focus on the Knowledge Translation commercialization piece. And so she worked very closely with the tech transfer offices at the hospital and the university, which, you know, I think Tilak and I are both in that unique case that because we're, we're both based in both the hospital and university, you have to kind of deal with everyone. So it's not just going through the university office, and they provided support in terms of developing and submitting patties and then also in terms of, you know, helping with some of the other legal aspects of starting the startup. And then at that point, we are able to establish the startup through the one of University of Toronto's accelerator programs, where they provided Pooja Viswanathan, who's the other co founder and the CEO, gave her space for her company to start where she was able to hire some students and employees and get things going. So it was a really nice example of how things started right from the start of the early research and then how we got into through the entire process.
Mary Goldberg 17:08
That’s awesome. Yes, so to our listeners who haven't heard, please check out our October and November episodes that we had with the Braze founder Pooja Viswanathan, as Alex just described her, she's fabulous. She has such a great energy and described her process so well, and it's so insightful, really love talking to her. So we're in the middle of a Canadian Tour. So thank you guys for taking us the next couple episodes further. But anyway, it's interesting to hear you talk about it, because it's almost like reverse engineering in some ways, right her her pathway, or rewinding back forward to see where it started and where it ended up. So you in many ways are that pre incubator stage for her right where you were able to test out a lot of the technologies and have this really fruitful environment that has resulted in an amazing company and startup. So you mentioned that incubator as a source of funding. Could you describe a little bit more about how some of your work is supported today?
Alex Mihailidis 18:15
Yeah, absolutely. So we have, obviously, projects at various stages. And basically the stage is the source of funding we're looking at. So we do the typical academic thing, and we apply for grants from our federal government. And then we receive funding also from various not for profits, such as the Alzheimer Society of Canada, and the Alzheimer's Association that's so based in the US. One thing I think that's really increased recently at KITE has also been bringing in external funding from individuals who have great interest in the work we're doing. So for example, we have funding from an individual's name Walter Schroeder, and him and his family set up a new institute at Toronto Rehab in KITE, particularly around technologies for brain health. And so much of the research we're doing now on technologies to support people with dementia, such as the role of social robotics, is being funded by the individual. And that's really a fantastic experience. Because while the money is nice, don't get me wrong. The experience that Mr. Schroeder brings and his insights, as being someone outside of the rehab world, but very successful in the business world has really been, I think, really invaluable to help us move things forward. And so we always look for those opportunities to bring people in who have an interest in what we're doing and give us that insight to that support.
Tilak Dutta 19:41
We have an example on our team like that too, the Hallisey family. Pamela Hallisey has donated now for I think she's on her sixth or seventh year of funding fellowship for for an individual on our team sphere and Gavin holds it right now. And so Pamela had an experience she and her son had this experience with Pamela's husband, Richard, when he was going through cancer treatment, he was living at home going through most of this treatment. And all of a sudden, he had bed sores show up on on all over his body. And they were completely, they took the family by surprise completely, they didn't know how to deal with them, they felt like there was very little support given by the healthcare system at the time to help them deal with it, to help them manage it. They ended up doing their own research, trying to understand what are the best ways to deal with this to track each of these wounds to try to get them to heal, really highlighted a number of major gaps in our healthcare system here in Ontario. And you know, after having dealt with that Richard has has passed away, but it was, I think, one of her Pamela's goals that she wanted to see more research in this area. And then she came on and funded this fellowship. And so we're developing a product that would help the with the goal of supporting families like hers, and to avoid some of the challenges. And so what we're doing there is developing a device that can detect when someone's been in the same position for too long, it's a very, very simple idea, if you're someone who's in bed a lot not moving a lot, you're at risk or pressure injury. And you know, depending on the your small changes, relatively small changes in your condition from one day to the next, or it could be because of the medication you're put on, you can stop moving all of a sudden, and within hours you can be you can start to have these pressure injuries forming. So what we're developing is a device that goes under the legs of the bed that detects when someone's been in the same position for too long and sends a message to the caregiver in that setting, so that they can come and reposition them. So we're you know, that work has been made possible because of that first hand experience that Pamela and Andrew have had. And we've been learning as we develop this product, we've been working very closely with them and every aspect of it really is advised they advise on all the aspects of the design and what the feedback should be and how it should be improved.
Mary Goldberg 22:06
Thanks for that story and description. What a way to make an impact and leave a lasting legacy and supporting your work. That's fantastic. I really appreciate both of your time today and hearing more about your work and really look forward to chatting with you more in our next episode. Thanks to you both.
Alex Mihailidis 22:25
Thank you Mary.
Mary Goldberg 22:28
Next time when we return with Alex and Tilak, we will chat more about aging in place and how accessibility standards can impact one's potential to do so, as well as advice they have for others who want to go into this space. Until then, keep making a positive impact in whatever you do and stay healthy. If you'd like ImpacTech please review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. A quick note from our sponsors. IMPACT initiatives are being developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. NIDILRR is a center within the Administration for Community Living Department of Health and Human Services. IMPACT initiatives do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government and the same goes for the University of Pittsburgh. We would like to thank our ImpacTech guests and our production team led by Dr. Michelle Zorrilla at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology.