Written by: E. George McCutcheon
A cornerstone of modern science is the blending of multiple disciplines to achieve positive changes in the world around us. Many of society’s problems involve complicated and systemic issues that require expertise from a spectrum of research areas. Plinio Morita is a prime example of this, as he holds degrees in Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Systems Design Engineering, he has certainly earned the respected Engineer’s Iron Ring. As the Director of the Ubiquitous Health Technology Lab (UbiLab), much of his focus is on population level surveillance, remote patient monitoring, and personalized medicine technologies to be used to prevent unnecessary visits to hospitals and shift our healthcare system towards community care and telehealth initiatives.
While the term surveillance may hold negative connotations for some, Plinio explains that their surveillance activities are of a different scope and are predicated on the concept that publicly available data sources can be utilized for myriad uses. For example, with climate change being a prime global concern, Plinio and his team are compiling data from sources such as social media, smart thermostats, weather report data, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and health monitoring apps to track how people respond to heat waves and air pollution. Plinio expands on this by highlighting how combining these data sets in unique ways can help pinpoint how people are dealing with these concerns, without invading anyone’s privacy. As a result, this novel data collection can help determine response trends and therefore inform how policy changes can encourage more effective responses to these issues, in this case the effects of global warming on energy consumption patterns, responses to temperature changes, and related health impacts.
Case in point, Plinio has students performing data mining operations on Twitter data feeds to understand how people have reacted to announcements that have been made over the past few years around the ways people respond to heat wave alerts and how they are coping with them. Questions such as, “Are they using the information they're receiving to say, ‘Yes, I'm gonna stay at home, or I'm gonna turn on the AC, or I'm going to the shopping mall to stay cool for the duration?’”, all add to the research synthesis of data that will help inform policy recommendations and future research directions. UbiLab have been working with organizations including Health Canada, BCDC, Ottawa Community Housing, and BC Community Housing to transform this information into actionable data to create tangible change in the relevant systems.
Plinio highlights another example of his research approach that involves using existing infrastructure in innovative ways in his expansion on their partnership with UNICEF Mongolia. In an effort to combat air pollution and increase population awareness, they are looking at crowd sourced IoT sensors to build their data sets and response plans. Instead of having to purchase devices and install them in different areas in Mongolia, this approach centres on working with multiple local partners that already have an array of these sensors in place and creating a repository of all of that information, which is termed reference air quality data. These are the expensive sensors that government officials often purchase, and other than the government agency that owns the sensors, Plinio’ s group are the only ones that have access to this data, where they have been working with them for about three years now on creating that ecosystem.
Their goal is to create real-time alerts based on air quality fluctuations and informing the populace when they should avoid going outdoors, or if they should be wearing masks to prevent exposing themselves to dangerous levels of air pollution. There is a massive upside to piggybacking off existing infrastructure in this manner; Morita is creating critical data sets that improve population-level health outcomes without incurring major upgrades to existing technologies, underlining the usefulness of this approach for other governments and research initiatives.
Their goal is to create real-time alerts based on air quality fluctuations and informing the populace when they should avoid going outdoors, or if they should be wearing masks to prevent exposing themselves to dangerous levels of air pollution. There is a massive upside to piggybacking off existing infrastructure in this manner; Morita is creating critical data sets that improve population-level health outcomes without incurring major upgrades to existing technologies, underlining the usefulness of this approach for other governments and research initiatives.
Similar in scope is his work with population level surveillance in relation to health monitoring supports for seniors, allowing them to live independently for longer and more safely. Dr. Morita’s research develops ways in which data collection from wearable health technology and other sources can create early warning triggers for seniors and emergency safeguards that keep them from being tied to a health care organization or a retirement community prematurely.
Another intriguing aspect of Dr. Morita’s work involves creating algorithms that engage with social media and other data sources to track trends in COVID and vaccine hesitancy, as well as global dis/misinformation campaigns, such as those that have arisen around the Ukraine/Russia conflict or national elections. Being able to understand how these influences are developing, who they are affecting and what they are impacting is critical for formulating appropriate response strategies in a timely manner.
Of further interest is the work of one of his graduate students, Pedro Miranda, who is using blockchain for coordinating consent management across different platforms. The key here being that they are not storing data in blockchain but using it as a management tool for approving access and sharing to different entities who may have different pieces of one’s health information, as blockchain provides the transparency and security necessary for this process. Using blockchain, health data can be shared with appropriate sources securely, while keeping the individual identities of the people involved strictly anonymous for healthcare and research purposes.
Plinio holds fast to the concept that diversity and unique approaches are fundamental tenets of both his research and graduate student supervision paradigms, as he mentions with a broad grin, “I'm not the type of person that will pick one project and dig deeper, deeper, deeper, and just multiply the number of grants in that same area. I like that diversity. I like working in different areas and I also like to give that back to my students. I try to give them as much freedom as we can in terms of thesis topics, we need to strike a balance. I meet with them on a regular basis and what I like to see are synergies between what their interests are and the projects that we have in the lab. But if they want to do something completely different, that has nothing to do with the lab, they're welcome to.”
“I'm not the type of person that will pick one project and dig deeper, deeper, deeper, and just multiply the number of grants in that same area. I like that diversity. I like working in different areas and I also like to give that back to my students. I try to give them as much freedom as we can in terms of thesis topics, we need to strike a balance. I meet with them on a regular basis and what I like to see are synergies between what their interests are and the projects that we have in the lab. But if they want to do something completely different, that has nothing to do with the lab, they're welcome to.”
He also stands firm on the pillar of social responsibility being a mandatory part of any research or teaching discussion, stating that when one considers where we are in society at the moment, we need to be very aware of the impacts that our research will have on people's lives. He points to what the EDI-R initiatives across the university are showing us; how long we have neglected certain things, and how important it is to contemplate that if we had thought about these things fifty, or even twenty years ago, how things might have been different right now.
Plinio stresses the import of such concerns and tries to foster that consideration in his students, with a critical thinking lens. Not just critical thinking in the sense that he wants them to be thorough and to think about all the possible alternatives for what they're doing; he notes that that is just the basics of what one does with graduate students. He pairs this with constant encouragement for his students to always challenge their research by asking themselves, “Should we be doing this? Is this the project that would have the biggest impact in society? What are some of the potential downsides of what we're doing?”.
While blending expertise to address complex problems is indeed a cornerstone of modern science, fore fronting the impacts on society is clearly another. Being mindful of the human aspects involved with research and academia is a legacy that Plinio Morita continues to build upon, one that his students will carry forward as well.