Friday, March 3, 2023

Ottawa hospital procures Able Innovation’s patient transfer solution

By Naomi Grosman. This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Able Innovation’s robotic patient transfer platform has found a home in Ottawa.

The company’s ALTA platform, which enables hands-free patient transfer, will be used at Saint-Vincent Hospital, a complex care unit of the Elisabeth Bruyère health network.

Jayiesh Singh, Able Innovations CEO, says that since joining Velocity and the University of Waterloo innovation ecosystem, the company has forged meaningful connections to advance the platform from concept to small scale product, around three feet in size, to a large-scale, operational prototype that transfers patients without putting clinical staff or patients at risk.

Able Innovation developed the prototype in collaboration with the hospital’s researchers with funding from Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization (OBIO) and AGE-WELL, an aging related health technology network.

Singh says current patient transfer methods pose a high risk of injury to staff, decreasing staff productivity. Patients also bemoan this manual transfer process, often calling it undignified.

“(Saint-Vincent) caters to a high rate of geriatric patients who need to be moved in a supine manner, which requires two to eight staff, using our platform it takes only one staff to do it independently,” Singh says. “This allows staff to focus on the patient, leaving patients feeling more cared for.”

The hospital procured four ALTA platforms — one per ward across two floors. But Singh says the company’s goal is for the platform, which has received regulatory clearance in the U.S. and Canada, to become the standard of care in clinical settings and beyond.

Singh, whose background is in robotics, witnessed the burden of patient transfers firsthand when he volunteered at a long-term care facility where his mother worked.

“I was seeing her get injured over and over again and thought ‘somebody should try something with technology,’” Singh says.

That thought spurred his foray into medical device development and has since opened his eyes to the platform’s potential impact. The vision beyond having it in hospitals is to allow for transfers in and out of bed in home settings, allowing seniors to stay at home instead of being at care facilities.

“That is the grand vision, but the product has to mature,” Singh says. “The platform has to be refined in a hospital setting where the use is more controlled.”

For now, Able Innovations is focusing on an early adopter launch, giving white glove service to Saint-Vincent and the other hospitals with which they are negotiating procurements.

He added that Able Innovations still faces headwinds.

“Investors haven’t fully wrapped their head around the importance of health tech like this — but they are starting to,” Singh says. “When the company started out, I was looking for resources to just help me understand the lay of the land when it comes to health tech startups and joining Velocity was a very practical choice for us.”

He said in the three years since joining the University's innovation ecosystem, which includes a collaboration with Professor Amir Khajepour, who leads the autonomous vehicle project WATonobus, the company has celebrated major milestones, including a $7.5 million seed round less than a year ago.

“In quick succession we’ve (also) seen a big growth in our intellectual property portfolio and received regulatory clearances,” Singh says. “Seeing more of a pull from the market, we are looking to raise another funding round and hire more staff to allow us to realize our potential.”

Velocity supports startups in software, deep tech and health tech in downtown Kitchener and remotely, and University of Waterloo students through various campus programming.

Work-integrated learning (WIL) takes the spotlight this month

This March, Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE) is highlighting the value of work-integrated learning (WIL). WIL month takes place each March to promote awareness of co-op and other forms of work integrated learning programs across Canada.

Waterloo has the largest co-op program in North America and is a leader in experiential education. CEE has provided co-op and WIL programs for 65 years and this month, dedicated WIL employers and students will be featured in a series of success stories. These stories include Hatch, ARUP and United Way, as well as the EDGE program.

Visit our HIRE webpsite every Wednesday in March for a new WIL story.  

Jacob Campbell and Mahbod Majid receive Graduate Research Excellence Awards

This article originally appeared on the Faculty of Mathematics' new site with excerpts from the School of Computer Science.

Congratulations to Pure Mathematics PhD candidate Jacob Campbell and recent Computer Science master’s graduate Mahbod Majid, the 2023 recipients of the Faculty of Mathematics Graduate Research Excellence Awards. The prestigious recognition comes with a $5,000 cash prize and is conferred annually to two graduate students in the Faculty of Mathematics who have authored or co-authored an outstanding research paper.

Jacob Campbell

Jacob Campbell is a PhD candidate in Pure Mathematics who is finishing his final semester of graduate education before beginning a postdoctoral position in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Virginia. In 2021 and 2022, he published two papers and posted the preprint of a third: "Finite free convolutions via Weingarten calculus," (with Zhi Yin, research fellow at Harbin Institute of Technology) “A Central Limit Theorem for Star-Generators of S_¥, Which Relates to Traceless CCR-GUE Matrices,” (with Claus Köstler, lecturer in Mathematical Sciences at University College Cork, Ireland, and Alexandru Nica, professor of Pure Mathematics at Waterloo and Campbell’s advisor) and “Commutators in finite free probability, I” (preprint, as sole author).

In the paper published with Köstler and Nica, the authors found a novel random matrix model for a certain family of probability distributions related to characters of symmetric groups. In the two other papers, the authors used techniques from combinatorial representation theory to study sums, products, and commutators of random matrices, in the context of the new theory of "finite free probability."

Campbell emphasizes the importance of collaboration to pure math research: “solving problems that other people are interested in” is a driver for his work. The area of inquiry that Campbell investigated, explains his Alexandru Nica, his advisor and a professor of Pure Mathematics, ”has been studied since the 1970s, but he recently found new interpretations within the framework.”

Mahbod Majid

Mahbod Majid, who is currently a first-year PhD student in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, received the award in recognition of the paper “Efficient Mean Estimation with Pure Differential Privacy via a Sum-of-Squares Exponential Mechanism.” This paper, which he co-authored with his graduate advisor Professor Gautam Kamath and Professor Samuel Hopkins at MIT, was presented at STOC 2022, the 54^th ACM Symposium of Theory of Computing, one of two top conferences in theoretical computer science.

Majid’s paper solved a core problem in private statistical estimation, one that has plagued researchers for years: how do you estimate the mean in a distribution or population efficiently and accurately while also preserving the privacy of sensitive data? “Previously developed algorithms had achieved two out of three of these goals at any given time,” explains Kamath, “but Mahbod’s elegant solution satisfies all three simultaneously. It is not only a nearly-optimal solution for the most fundamental statistical task under strong privacy constraints, but it also closes a long-standing gap in our understanding of private multivariate statistics.” 

Since Majid’s paper was presented in 2022, it has attracted the attention of researchers in adjacent fields and inspired several follow-up works. Moreover, his solution shows interesting new connections between privacy and robustness of statistical estimation algorithms. Learn more about Majid's award-winning research.

The era of globalization isn't over, study argues

Reports of globalization’s death are premature, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Waterloo, the University of British Columbia and the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

Their findings challenge widespread assumptions that the rivalry between the United States and China, recently highlighted during the Chinese spy balloon crisis, can only further escalate and split the world into two hostile camps.

Dr. Victor Cui, a professor at Waterloo’s Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business, said analysis shows that most likely isn’t going to happen.

“First, the potential economic cost of doing this is too high for the U.S., China, their allies, and the entire world,” Cui said. “The breakdown of globalization ultimately hurts consumers, which we are all experiencing too well. Globalization is not over.”

Beyond economic realities, the researchers found that the U.S.-China rivalry is based, in part, on misunderstanding. For example, China’s intentions to seek ‘self-reliance’ were largely defensive while being interpreted in Washington’s narratives as solely aggressive. For their part, China’s communist leaders bristled at what they saw as American attempts to limit China’s growing economic and political power.

The authors suggest that Washington may have overstated China’s techno-nationalistic threat to the liberal world order for a few reasons. First, China increasingly centralizes top-down control over its innovation effort, which is unlikely to sustain its rapid technological advancement. Second, China may not be able to continuously inject the funding required to sustain its technology innovation because of its continuing economic growth decline. Moreover, China also faces a growing shortage of young productive workers in the next decade due to its former one-child policy.

The researchers conclude key assumptions — that China’s rapid pace of technology innovation will accelerate, and that China may establish its own technological hegemony and surpass the U.S. in some strategic fields — are overstated.

“We expect China’s threat will slowly disappear — it is not sustainable,” said Cui, the Conrad Research Excellence Chair. “Once the fear of China’s rise declines in the U.S., we expect the disengagement to slow down and even dissipate. We can be conservatively optimistic there will be changes.”

The researchers argue the entire world would benefit if the U.S. and China acted as partners instead of rivals, as they can more effectively manage existential global challenges such as inflation, climate change and future pandemics while minimizing the risks of military confrontations.

A paper on the findings, The Political Economy and Dynamics of Bifurcated World Governance and the Decoupling of Value Chains: An Alternative Perspective, appears in the Journal of International Business Studies.

IT Review Interim Report now available

A message from Information Systems & Technology (IST)

The February 2023 IT Review Interim Report is now available for review. This report offers an update on the status and actions being taken to support the advancement of recommendations for each major theme and "other" categorization identified in the 2020 IT Review final report. The document identifies timelines for tasks/action items, other ideas being discussed within the working groups (lead by the co-leads), and cross-theme connections.

Project background

The IT Review, conducted between April 2019 and May 2020, was launched to assess the University of Waterloo's overall IT capability. The result of this work was captured in the Campus Information Technology Review Final Report (PDF) and included a number of recommendations for building on and enhancing Waterloo's IT landscape.

Taking action

65 recommendations identified in the final report were reviewed and organized into seven main themes, each with a unique goal. There were also eight "Other" recommendations that, while not considered major, were included in the report for consideration by campus IT management. Project co-leads will take responsibility for a theme(s) and, in collaboration with other team members, aim to bring accountability, visibility, and awareness to the work; action identified recommendations, where reasonable; and report on progress for the implementation of the IT Review recommendations. These updates will be included on theme pages as they are made available.

Major themes and co-leads

• Administrative systems, service, and delivery, Greg Smith, Fred Zhu, Corrine Krauss
• IT governance & Data, Greg Smith, Catherine Newell-Kelly, Stefan ldziak
• Research computing, Andrew McAlorum, Bill Mcilroy, Vincent Gaudet
• Risk & Security, Jason Testart, Stephen Murphy, Justin Nankivell
• Strategy & Vision, Bruce Campbell, Marek Stastna, Beth Namachchivaya
• Teaching & Learning, Pam Fluttert, David DeVidi, Robert Park
• Working together, Andrew McAlorum, Stephen Murphy, Michelle Hollis & Melanie Will

Other recommendations

• Other recommendations and considerations

Learn more

You are invited to visit the IT Review website to learn more about this work or connect directly with project co-leads to learn more about a particular theme or action item. General questions about the IT Review may be submitted to Andrew McAlorum, amcalorum@uwaterloo.ca, or Connie van Oostveen, connie.vanoostveen@uwaterloo.ca.