The infraNET Project and 
Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research
University of Waterloo

present ...
 

Neonatal Health Informatics:

Uncharted Discovery

by

Carolyn McGregor

Canada Research Chair in Health Informatics,

Faculty of Business and IT/Faculty of Health Sciences,

University of Ontario Institute of Technology

May 27, 2009
3:00 - 4:30 PM EST
Davis Centre, Room 1302, University of Waterloo

Seminar Series Sponsors
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
McKesson Information Solutions - Smart Systems for Health Agency
Healthcare Information Management and Communications Canada

Seminar Series Supporter
ITAC Health

This seminar is free but you must register to attend.

Presentation Archive 2009

Abstract

As Canada Research Chair in Health Informatics, Dr. Carolyn McGregor is pioneering new ways to improve outcomes for premature infants. A century ago, a new baby was just as much a cause for concern as a cause for joy, as more than one in 10 infants died at birth or shortly thereafter. While that number has dropped significantly, the number of premature births (7.1%) may actually be on the rise in Canada. These early births are responsible for 75% of all infant deaths in Canada. Even when infants survive, premature babies may develop lifelong problems unless cared for properly. Although there are state-of-the-art medical devices to monitor premature babies, neonatologists are increasingly burdened by vast quantities of charted data and many false alarms from medical devices. Neonates represent the second major cohort (other than patients over 62 years) for ICU admissions.

This presentation overviews several research projects that aim to increase survival and quality of life rates for neonates. Dr McGregor s contributions include: 1) the first On-Demand Virtual Neonatal Intensive Care Units Supporting Rural, Remote and Urban Neonatal Care; 2) new approaches to data mining to support null hypothesis based clinical research that can predict the onset of critical medical conditions; and 3) the real time cross correlation of physiological data to support predictors that allow the generation of complex neonatal medical alerts.

About the Speaker

Dr. Carolyn McGregor is an Associate Professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, with a cross appointment between the Faculty of Business and Information Technology and Faculty of Health Sciences. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Health Informatics. She obtained her PhD in Computing Science (UTS, Sydney). Her PhD research included an innovative intelligent decision support system (IDSS) framework which she extended resulting in the Solution Manager Service (SMS). The SMS contained pioneering research in the areas of web services, event stream processing, multi-agent data mining and near-real time data warehouse loading. Her recent research focus has been the improvement and extension of that research within the context of health and medicine to create advanced support for clinical management and research together with new remote patient care frameworks and patient journey modeling and re-engineering approaches. In 2008 she received the prestigious multi-million dollar IBM First of a Kind (FOAK) research award with IBM Canada and IBM TJ Watson Research Center, NY.

For more information
Shirley Fenton
Managing Director, WIHIR
University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4074

Seminar Hosts
This seminar is hosted by the Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research (WIHIR) and The infraNET Project, University of Waterloo.

The infraNET Project, initiated by the University of Waterloo in 1996, is a partnership to advance Web and Internet technologies. Its founding partners were: LivePage (now part of Oracle), MKS, Open Text, RIM, Sybase (Waterloo) and Waterloo Maple.

We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Institute for Computer Research, University of Waterloo.