Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

College Applies High-Tech Solutions to Health Care

Health Studies and ICT students and professors at Toronto-based Centennial College are teaming up with companies to develop new health communication technologies.

And the result is a host of innovative approaches to meeting real-world health care challenges.

Centennial's Applied Research and Innovation Centre is involved with industry on a number of projects through the College and Community Innovation (CCI) Program of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

One project involves the use of gaming technologies to help people manage chronic diseases such as diabetes. The college has partnered with NexJ Systems to develop a health-game prototype that includes an avatar represntating the individual. "The person interacts with the avatar and can see the results that would occur if they lost weight, controlled their blood sugar or exercised more," says Trish Dryden, Centennial's associate vice-president of Applied Research and Corporate Planning. "This is about using gaming to effect lifestyle change for health benefits."